Hun­dreds flocked to at­tend the UNC’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment launch on Sunday at the car park of the UNC’s Cou­va South Con­stituen­cy of­fices at Cam­den Road, Cou­va. The crowd was not as mas­sive as in the days of Kam­la-ma­nia pri­or to the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion but was con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent since there was a large gath­er­ing of Afro-T&T sup­port­ers and Venezue­lan na­tion­als don­ning UNC T-shirts who came out to sup­port can­di­dates from north and south Trinidad.

Yelis­mar del Car­men Matheus and Sanchez Salazar and their chil­dren, who have dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing Eng­lish, were donned in UNC colours. By 2pm most of the maxi taxis had al­ready brought sup­port­ers to the venue and were busy look­ing for places to park in the var­i­ous back­roads and in-front of busi­ness­es in a com­mu­ni­ty where park­ing is scarce.

Some sup­port­ers choose to re­main on the pave­ment out­side the Cou­va Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal while a hand­ful grav­i­tat­ed to the near­by back­stage bar where they had a cold bev­er­age and lis­tened to the pro­ceed­ings. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar walked in­to the event through the crowds af­ter 2pm to get the show go­ing.

Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh was the first to open the bat­ting as he bashed gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies. Moth­ers with chil­dren sought shel­ter from the sun in the few tents avail­able. Fuad Khan’s de­ci­sion not to con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion was on the lips of many UNC die-hards.

An­tho­ny Ben­net, one of Khan’s con­stituents, knelt and begged Khan to re­con­sid­er. Ben­net told Guardian Me­dia that Khan was the best rep­re­sen­ta­tive that the part has. Kenya Charles, the leader of the Women’s Arm said she wished Khan all suc­cess in his fu­ture en­deav­ours. Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath had the full at­ten­tion of the crowd as he bashed the PNM with their ver­sion of Sex, Lies and Mon­ey. Padarath made way for David Lee the Pointe-a-Pierre MP.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar came on stage and al­so start­ed bash­ing the Kei­th Row­ley regime claim­ing mis­man­age­ment. Her lengthy speech al­so gave some elec­tion promis­es. One that caught the ear was a promise to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na. Pock­ets of the crowd cheered with this news to al­low the mass­es to ac­cess gan­ja. Af­ter she wound up the 139 can­di­dates were an­nounced.