PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)  – Trade union leaders led thousands of people, including politicians, onto the streets of the Trinidad capital on Friday, demanding fresh general elections and the removal of the coalition People’s Partnership government that celebrates its fourth anniversary on Saturday.

The Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) staged the protest march and rally saying that the Kamla Persad Bissessar administration had moved the country from one crisis to another ever since it came to power on May 24, 2010.

JTUM president, Ancil Roget said the march was a “very serious event intent on showing the world we are against what this government is doing in Trinidad and Tobago”.

“We are prepared to do everything within the law to ensure that they go, that they go that they go,” he said to shouts of approval from the crowd.

There was a heavy police presence, including some in riot gear, as the protestors, including supporters of the main opposition People’s National Movement (PNM), sang tunes calling for the removal of the government after the police said they would not be allowed to use “music trucks” on the prescribed routes.

But as they staged their march, supporters of the coalition gathered outside the Parliament building on the outskirts of the capital in a show of strength for the government and also for Sports Minister Anil Roberts, who has denied being the person shown in a video where a man is seen preparing a marijuana cigarette.

Roget said he was also calling for a Commission of Inquiry into the state-owned oil company, PETROTRIN, which is still dealing with an oil spill that began in December last year.

Roget, the president general of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), has accused Prime Minister Persad Bissessar of failing to meet with the union to discuss the situation.

The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), which at one time formed part of the coalition government, has described Prime Minister Persad Bissessar as “the Emperor who has no clothes on.

“And it is not a pretty sight, this emperor with no clothes on,” said MSJ Leader David Abdullah.

PNM Leader, Dr Keith Rowley said that the Cabinet of Prime Minister Persad Bissessar has collapsed and pointed to the latest controversy as proof that the government has ‘outlived its usefulness’

Rowley said that it was instructive that Prime Minister Persad Bissessar has not uttered a single word regarding the video that the majority of the country had no doubt who was the person identified.

“We want the election now, we want the election now,” Rowley said, warning supporters that the government had developed a strategy where it is now attacking “the messenger rather than dealing with the message”.

Rowley also issued a statement, claiming that “people dressed in red and carrying placards with racist statements have been planted throughout the march.

“Clearly those who wish to stop at nothing to discredit it and distract from our real purpose, which is to highlight the gross mismanagement of our nation’s affairs and the wanton and unabated corruption being presided over by the prime minister.

“We reject out of hand this underhanded attempt to change the conversation surrounding the march and we distance ourselves from the divisive statements, born out of deceptive and dirty tactics of those who wish to continue to rape our treasury,” Rowley added.