Panday: Manning preparing for elections

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning’s walkabout session has been interpreted by Leader of the Opposition Basdeo Panday to mean “general elections are near.” Manning is not walking about to take exercise, but “to mobilise his supporters and to send a message to some of his Cabinet ministers that he was dissatisfied with their performances.” “Whether it is the next three years or three months, general elections are near at hand,” said Panday, who has just returned from England, with his wife, Oma, where he was holidaying with his children. He could not understand how a Prime Minister could go on a walkabout after just two years in office.

He asked, “What happened, do they not have any more place to walk around the Savannah again? “Do you think it is really exercise he wants? He is doing that to prepare for the general elections and to send a message to those who are threatening him that there is division and rumbling in the PNM,” Panday said. He was delivering the feature address at the Monday night forum of the UNC at the Endeavour Hindu School, Chaguanas, to a large audience, who wanted to hear what Panday had to say of the recent incidents that were taking place in the country. The PNM, Panday said, is destroying the country with their inefficiency and the “time has come to rescue the country and once again demonstrate good governance.” The Leader of the Opposition said the people who voted for the PNM “made the biggest mistake of their lives and the end of that time has come after the PNM ruined the country in just  two years in office.”

He said, “Everything that we built in the six years we were in Government, the PNM has destroyed, apart from which under their rule, murder and kidnapping has increased.” “They just do not have a clue how to deal with crime and violence in schools,” Panday stressed. He said that “there are now 23 murders in 33 days and if this continues at the present rate there will be 2020 murders by 2020 — the year of PNM’s new vision.” He said that unemployment was on the rise under the PNM Government as some 9,000 people were on the breadline as a result of the closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd, and with retrenchment at BWIA, WASA and other Government agencies. Panday noted that Minister of Education Hazel Manning was blaming Carnival and football for the increase in violence in schools, and asked, “Why was that not the case under the UNC rule?” “They would not admit that they are incapable of running the country,” Panday stressed. He said, “everything the PNM has put its hands on has deteriorated, for example they spent $40 million in two years and there is nothing to show for it.” “Now that the population is fed up to the teeth, it is time to move and mobilise our party to take over the Government,” Panday said.

He said that “I can feel it in my bones that elections are coming soon, but I did not think that it would have come so soon.” He thought that Manning “would have had a little more intelligence and a little more brain to stave off inefficiency and incompetence, but evil has an uncanny  way of catching up with you.” He said knew that there were “many PNM supporters, both inside and outside, who were fed up with what was taking place in Government but they do not know what to do in the circumstances.” Panday also noted that “Manning was pushing a knob in two directions, so that if he cannot control his party members, he is going to call an election.” “And under those circumstances, we must be ready for any eventuality, if it comes this year or next year,” he added.

He underlined the mission of the party as being firm in the belief that “unity was the answer and that is what we were trying to do to remove the Indian base image, but Ramesh, Trevor and Ralph did not see it that way as they felt their position was being lowered with the entry of other groups into the party.” Panday stressed that efforts must be made to join forces with African groups in the country so that when the two races join hands, nation-building would forge ahead at a tremendous pace and that was the only way to achieve 2020 first world status. Panday said that the PNM was introducing CAPE to A’ Level students in the country but it could only take students to the University of Guyana — where “you would not send your dog, and to UWI which is full.” He explained that under the UNC, the Cambridge examination was being pushed and “in that regard our students found themselves in top positions in the world. That was education — UNC style.”