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“Stand by. Get your marching shoes ready, Get your clothes ready. The battle has just begun. They touch one. They touch all,” PNM chairman Marvin Gonzales said yesterday as he vowed that the PNM would take up the challenge of defending the rights of the retrenched and the vulnerable.

Speaking at the PNM convention at the Port of Spain City Hall, Gonzales said: “If it is one thing that is going to wake up the PNM fighting spirit is now that they are going after the CEPEP workers,...the URP workers...the reforestation workers. They have touched us and we are going to respond, and we are going to respond, and we are going to respond not only in the courts, but we are going to respond politically as well.”

“Today, more than ever, our country needs us, needs the PNM to be great again. In one week, we have lost our Central Bank governor. In one week, the chief executive officer of the Water and Sewerage Authority was similarly dismissed and nine executive officials. All the (300) CEPEP contractors and, by extension, the 10,000-plus workers. We are also hearing of job cuts at the Land Settlement Agency, more job cuts at WASA and the reforestation programme. And we know that it is only a matter of time before every CEO of every State enterprise, all employed under vigorous recruitment and selection criteria, will now face the acts of hurricane and brutal (Minister Barry) Padarath,” he said.