?We are in­deed a lucky na­tion. We are still blessed with coura­geous in­di­vid­u­als who will take a stand, usu­al­ly when we are at a loss to deal with the an­guish, dis­gust and fear brought on by fail­ing politi­cians, drought and oth­er stres­sors.

To­day, we should all pay trib­ute to the 81-year-old Per­cy Vil­lafana. He's the man who crossed him arms in a failed at­tempt to pre­vent Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning from en­ter­ing his premis­es dur­ing a re­cent walk­a­bout.

The first tele­vi­sion news cov­er­age of the in­ci­dent brought sur­prise, mirth and sup­port for Vil­lafana's ac­tion, which made news be­cause of the ob­vi­ous age of Vil­lafana and, just as im­por­tant, be­cause of the in­cred­i­ble re­sponse of the Prime Min­is­ter, who sim­ply ig­nored him and pro­ceed­ed to walk in­to the man's home.

But ob­serve how this in­ci­dent has blown up in­to front page news, and ob­serve too the clear and com­pre­hen­sive in­ter­view on tele­vi­sion on Sat­ur­day evening. Vil­lafana has been gal­vanised in­to na­tion­al hero sta­tus, not be­cause of his spon­ta­neous act, but be­cause of the man­ner in which the Prime Min­is­ter and his han­dlers have at­tempt­ed to deal with the event. Where is the prophet­ess? one must ask.

Man­ning us­es the Par­lia­ment to im­ply that Vil­lafana is a for­eign­er, that he is slight­ly se­nile, and that the in­ci­dent is of lit­tle im­por­tance. If the last re­sponse is true, why take it in­to the Par­lia­ment? Vil­lafana has be­come an overnight sym­bol who has ar­tic­u­lat­ed loud­ly on is­sues which so many of us are ful­mi­nat­ing about in our homes. It should not sur­prise us if the Gov­ern­ment's pro­pa­gan­da peo­ple be­gin plac­ing a num­ber of lengthy tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials and full-page ad­ver­tise­ments (a la the Na­pa ri­poste) in an ef­fort to ex­plain the Prime Min­is­ter's ver­sion of this in­ci­dent. It will not go away in a hur­ry.

Mon­i­ca Gopaul

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