Even when Patrick Man­ning does the right thing, it is still wrong. The right thing is re­sign­ing from his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy. The wrong thing is wait­ing so long to do it. Man­ning should have stepped down as po­lit­i­cal leader and re­signed his seat the day af­ter he lost the elec­tion. His de­ci­sion to call the elec­tion so soon, es­pe­cial­ly with all the scan­dals tak­ing place with­in his gov­ern­ment at the time, was a po­lit­i­cal blun­der of ex­treme pro­por­tions. Or it was a Machi­avel­lian de­ci­sion to sab­o­tage his own par­ty whose sup­port he had lost, mi­nus a few syco­phants? He may have called the elec­tion, which every­one knew he would lose, to tell the PNM go to hell.

Man­ning is not un­like an­oth­er for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day. They both have the type of per­son­al­i­ty that re­fus­es to go qui­et­ly in­to the night, even though Man­ning sat qui­et­ly in Par­lia­ment. T&T de­serves new lead­ers with a new and pro­gres­sive style of lead­er­ship. Whether the present lead­ers are equipped to unite the coun­try be­yond race and eth­nic­i­ty, on­ly time will tell. What time has al­ready told us is that both Man­ning and Pan­day de­serve to fade qui­et­ly in­to the back­ground. Maybe then some jour­nal- ists will be de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cause bac­cha­nal in ei­ther par­ty by per­sist­ing in seek­ing out these two failed lead­ers to com­ment on every­thing un­der the sun. We know what they will say. Please, for the sake of uni­ty with­in the PP and with­in the PNM, let these two old sol­diers sim­ply fade away.

Ger­ard John­son

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