Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The pas­sage of time, and deep and non-sen­ti­men­tal his­tor­i­cal analy­ses will have to weigh in the bal­ance the ca­reer and con­tri­bu­tion of Patrick Man­ning to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. His was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to bring a mea­sure of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and self-sus­tain­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment to T&T, Er­ic Williams and his gen­er­a­tion of Caribbean lead­ers hav­ing brought T&T and the re­gion some dis­tance out of colo­nial rule and self-de­pre­ci­a­tion.

Na­ture pro­vid­ed Man­ning and T&T with the where­with­al (oil and nat­ur­al gas); the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal work came through the likes of Ken Julien; Wen­dell Mot­t­ley and oth­ers pro­vid­ed the eco­nom­ic in­sight; with Lenny Saith con­tribut­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and sober judg­ment to mon­e­tise and ex­port nat­ur­al gas through the process of cre­at­ing liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG).

The ob­jec­tive of Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning was for down­stream in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion to be achieved through the fab­ri­ca­tion of a num­ber of se­mi-fin­ished prod­ucts through the use of the nat­ur­al gas. And while nat­ur­al gas has been used in the cre­ation of a range of petro-chem­i­cal prod­ucts, the ob­jec­tives of pro­duc­ing plas­tics, hard board and oth­er fin­ished prod­ucts is still out­stand­ing; in­deed even the hope for the use of nat­ur­al gas, CNG, for petrol is yet to be ful­ly re­alised.

But notwith­stand­ing the un­fin­ished agen­da, the hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars earned as rev­enue (1993-to the present) from the ex­port of LNG earned this coun­try a fab­u­lous lifestyle over the pe­ri­od.

As many have point­ed out, in­clud­ing for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Wen­dell Mot­t­ley (T&T In­dus­tri­al Pol­i­cy 1959-2008), Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning was in "full sup­port" of the fi­nan­cial lib­er­al­i­sa­tion pro­gramme and the move to­wards glob­al­iza­tion.

The ques­tion to be an­swered though, through re­search and analy­sis, is whether the rev­enues earned from en­er­gy and fi­nan­cial lib­er­al­i­sa­tion were ful­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly utilised to sig­nif­i­cant­ly di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my from its de­pen­dence on the rise and fall of in­ter­na­tion­al gas and oil prices?

As many have said, Man­ning's re­con­sti­tu­tion of the PNM af­ter the lick­ing of 1986 was his great­est con­tri­bu­tion to his par­ty.

Af­ter los­ing gov­ern­ment in 1995, and up­on his re­turn first in 2001, placed there by Pres­i­dent Arthur N R Robin­son, and his sub­se­quent vic­to­ries in the 2002 and 2007 gen­er­al elec­tions, and un­til his elec­toral de­feat in 2010, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning em­barked on the course of de­vel­op­ing and ex­pand­ing what amount­ed to a vast so­cial wel­fare pro­gramme to meet needs he said he had heard of on his walk through the elec­toral con­stituen­cies dur­ing his pe­ri­od in op­po­si­tion.

It was prob­a­bly the largest and most cost­ly so­cial wel­fare pro­gramme any­where in Cari­com: CDAP drugs for a range of chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases; the Gate pro­gramme to en­sure all who had the aca­d­e­m­ic ca­pac­i­ty, but were with­out the fi­nances, were al­lowed in­to uni­ver­si­ties at home and abroad; the range of pro­grammes for the youth with and with­out ter­tiary lev­el train­ing were among the mea­sures tak­en by Man­ning to spread the wealth and the hope of con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al hu­man de­vel­op­ment.

Make-work pro­grammes were ex­tend­ed to en­sure that al­most all in the so­ci­ety had the where­with­al to put some­thing on the ta­ble. Bil­lions were spent: did the coun­try get val­ue for mon­ey? Did the make-work pro­grammes deep­en the de­pen­dence on the State or did they pro­duce in­de­pen­dent crafts­men? Did the pro­grammes fight against the crim­i­nal urges? Did the ex­pen­di­ture mere­ly sub­serve Man­ning and the PNM's elec­toral in­ter­ests?

The re­search al­so has to find an­swers to whether or not Man­ning in of­fice con­tributed to a heal­ing of the his­tor­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial con­flict be­tween In­dos and Afros; or did Man­ning's poli­cies, pro­grammes and po­lit­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty con­tribute to the ex­ac­er­ba­tion of the prob­lems?

What of Man­ning's ef­forts to turn back the tide of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal­i­ty? His sup­port­ers would point out that the gov­ern­ment which suc­ceed­ed Man­ning's ad­min­is­tra­tion re­moved with­out re­plac­ing the cen­tral cog in the an­ti-crime pro­gramme, ie, the off­shore pa­trol ves­sels which were de­signed to pre­vent the drugs and guns land­ing here.

Un­der­stand­ably, large seg­ments of the coun­try, in­clu­sive of many of Man­ning's fiercest po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents want to be grate­ful and emo­tion­al about his life and ca­reer. It is a nat­ur­al and very hu­man re­sponse to the pass­ing of a cen­tral and pop­u­lar fig­ure.

As­sess­ment will al­so have to be made of Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's many bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion pro­grammes. The lat­ter part of Mr Man­ning's 2007-2010 ad­min­is­tra­tion was rife with con­tro­ver­sy and al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion. And while Mr Man­ning has nev­er been tagged with be­ing di­rect­ly in­volved in cor­rup­tion, he is said to have al­lowed oth­ers to get away with tens of mil­lions. But if there re­main is­sues to be un­rav­elled, is­sues about the above and more, there are no ques­tions about Mr Man­ning's ef­forts to deep­en the in­te­gra­tion process in Cari­com through the rec­om­men­da­tions of the West In­di­an Com­mis­sion.

"It was not his fault if he was not able to per­suade us, his Cari­com fel­low lead­ers, to go a step fur­ther in seek­ing to build the kind of ma­chin­ery with­in the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at that would en­able de­ci­sions once tak­en by the Heads to be fol­lowed up and en­forced," says Mr Pat­ter­son.

The love for Mr Man­ning, the gen­uine ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the work he did, and the ex­pres­sions of con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly left be­hind are all ac­cept­able and re­quired at this time. How­ev­er, in the in­ter­est of na­tion build­ing, Mr Man­ning's lega­cy as prime min­is­ter has to be clin­i­cal­ly ex­am­ined to be in­struc­tive as to the poli­cies and pro­grammes to be adopt­ed.