Hunger strik­er?Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh is now op­ti­mistic "some­thing will de­vel­op" con­cern­ing a pro­pos­al pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day by civ­il groups to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to end the im­passe be­tween her Gov­ern­ment and the High­way Re-route Move­ment.

"We are op­ti­mistic some­thing will de­vel­op. We just have to wait and see," a lu­cid Kublals­ingh told the me­dia yes­ter­day as he lay on an am­bu­lance stretch­er at the side of the road next to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St?Clair. It was Day 14 of the hunger strike he em­barked on to protest what he has de­scribed as the PM's break­ing of her promise to halt the Debe to Mon?De­sir seg­ment of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way project and do an in­de­pen­dent tech­ni­cal re­view.

Kublals­ingh last Tues­day ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to meet with Per­sad-Bisses­sar to iron out the de­tails of the tech­ni­cal re­view. He said he has re­ceived no re­sponse from her, thus far, con­cern­ing that. A rel­a­tive, not­ing Kublals­ingh's con­di­tion is much worse than is be­lieved, re­port­ed­ly said he would be tak­en to the hos­pi­tal in the am­bu­lance at the end of yes­ter­day's protest and per­suad­ed to stay there.

How­ev­er, in one of his surges of en­er­gy, Kublals­ingh, in­stead of be­ing wheeled to the am­bu­lance on the stretch­er, as is the cus­tom of late, stood up and walked to the ve­hi­cle parked near­by, al­beit a bit shaky. This brought ex­treme de­light to sup­port­er, Jen­ny Kalloo, an "an­i­mal rights and wholis­tic ac­tivist", who was so grate­ful to God she re­ferred to him as "my chookalooks God."

"Look Wayne is walk­ing! Thank You my lov­ing, chookalooks God," she prayed. Ear­li­er, asked if the mat­ter has gone be­yond the protest against the high­way, Kublals­ingh told the T&T Guardian his hunger strike had be­come a na­tion­al, per­haps in­ter­na­tion­al, is­sue. "I spoke to Reuters and BBC. They want to know why I am do­ing this and what the high­way project is about," he said.

He said in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, such ac­tion (as his) was im­por­tant to in­flu­ence prin­ci­pled and sci­en­tif­ic gov­er­nance. "Oth­er­wise, chaos re­sults," he added. Through­out the af­ter­noon, sev­er­al peo­ple vis­it­ed Kublals­ingh to en­cour­age and sup­port him. One group of young UNC?sup­port­ers ex­pressed dis­ap­proval of his ac­tion.

Kublals­ingh Hunger Strike - Day 14

Kublals­ingh, asked to re­spond, was kind. "It's good to see young peo­ple get­ting in­to pol­i­tics. But the con­tent of their ideas needs to be im­proved," he said. Among his vis­i­tors were at­tor­ney Ian Brooks and his two sons, Christo­pher, eight, and Justin, 13. Brooks squeezed his sons, in their school uni­forms, through the crowd to Wayne's stretch­er and had them present him with a copy of the In­de­pen­dence Pledge.

"They have to learn what it is to em­phathise with a cause and see some­one who is pre­pared to give his life for a cause," Brooks said. Ca­lyp­son­ian The Orig­i­nal De Fos­to Him­self was an­oth­er vis­i­tor. He said he wrote a song, "Spir­i­tu­al­ly Strong" about Kublals­ingh which would be re­leased soon.

The song, which will be a heal­ing song for the na­tion, he said, starts with the lines: "As you know there are those who cru­ci­fied you, in your fa­ther's house you are one of the cho­sen few." At 3.40 pm, a rain cloud ap­peared over the scene and Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Shi­raz Khan, shout­ed: "Let's close up be­fore the rain come down." The group then prayed and dis­persed.