Dookeran, Jack support Kamla's ripping of PNM manifesto

Kamla Persad-Bissessar's decision to tear up the PNM's manifesto is getting negative reviews from the PNM and its supporters, but her colleagues are supporting the symbolic act.

The UNC leader ripped up the document on Tuesday at a meeting in Gasparille, the same day that the PNM released the document. It was meant to demonstrate her conclusion that the manifesto was of no value.

On Wednesday, the leader of the Congress of the People said he saw nothing wrong with it. Winston Dookeran told the Trinidad Guardian what she did was a graphic demonstration against the "tainted projects and proposals" highlighted in the document.

“Well, you have to demonstrate sometimes your point of view in a graphic way in politics and I suspect, at a political meeting, this is what had happened," he told the paper.

"The essence of the issue is that the PNM manifesto, from what I have seen, is a set of glossy pictures of projects that came under the scrutiny of the Uff Commission,” he said.

He said the manifesto appears to be "a celebration of all these projects that have been now tainted with high levels of over-spending and corruption and waste.”

Dookeran warned that the Government would have to borrow heavily to achieve the goals outlined in the PNM manifesto.

"The so-called promises that they have now put forth to the country, they have done so for the last eight years and that it is very clear that they have been unable to meet the needs of the country in so many different areas," Dookeran noted.

He explained that the country's debt is getting "to a threshold point that is seen as danger in any economic analysis" since it now stands at 45 per cent of the nation’s GDP and getting close to 50 per cent.

The manifesto incident has also won support from UNC Chairman Jack Warner, who explained to supporters Wednesday night in Princes Town that it is a dramatic form of protest against the PNM and its empty promises.

Warner said he would do the same and if he had more PNM manifestos he would tear them all up. He explained that it is a form of protest that is common in politics.

He reminded his audience of one of the more notable incidents when PNM founder Dr Eric Williams burned the Trinidad Guardian in Wooford Square.

That act by Williams was a reaction to the PNM's defeat by the opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in the federal elections of 1958, which came two years after the PNM won its first mandate and formed a coalition government.

Williams blamed the media for his defeat and the Indian supporters of the DLP whom he described as a "recalcitrant" minority.