Richard Lord

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is warn­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of so­cial un­rest in T&T if dif­fer­ences among the pop­u­la­tion are not man­aged prop­er­ly. He said, too, all the race talk in the coun­try would not as­sist in any way. Man­ning made the state­ment while ad­dress­ing a meet­ing of his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy on Cof­fee Street on Mon­day night. The me­dia were not al­lowed to cov­er the meet­ing but a video record­ing was post­ed on Man­ning's face­book page yes­ter­day. He said the meet­ing was called to keep the elec­torate in­formed and ed­u­cat­ed and to keep the PNM to­geth­er.

Man­ning re­called there were four coups in Fi­ji be­cause the dif­fer­ences in that coun­try were not prop­er­ly man­aged by those in au­thor­i­ty. He said: "If you don't man­age the dif­fer­ences that ex­ist among a peo­ple, those dif­fer­ences con­spire to di­vide rather than to unite. "There­fore any so­ci­ety in which you have di­ver­si­ty has to be care­ful­ly man­aged to avoid it hap­pen­ing. "Don't be­lieve it can­not hap­pen here, God is not a Tri­ni, do not be­lieve it can­not hap­pen. It is the biggest mis­take you could make," Man­ning stressed.

He said all the race talk across the coun­try would not be of any use. "You see all this talk about race, it gets us nowhere," he added.

Man­ning said the meet­ing was al­so called be­cause of a "ma­jor trans­gres­sion" com­mit­ted by for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Nizam Mo­hammed, who pub­licly stat­ed his in­ten­tions to ad­dress the al­leged eth­nic im­bal­ance in the Po­lice Ser­vice. Mo­hammed said then there were not enough East In­di­ans in the hi­er­ar­chy of the Po­lice Ser­vice. Man­ning said Mo­hammed's state­ment "wasn't that there aren't enough In­di­ans in the lead­er­ship of the Po­lice Ser­vice, it is that there are too many Africans." Man­ning said Mo­hammed's state­ment wasn't in sup­port of any group, it was against a group. He said the coun­try was now fac­ing a very se­ri­ous is­sue of race re­la­tions.

He said he called the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion be­cause he con­clud­ed his lead­er­ship had be­come an is­sue and to "let the peo­ple de­cide and the peo­ple de­cid­ed it." Man­ning said he should not be blamed for call­ing the elec­tion more than two years be­fore it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. He said: "And if we didn't do it, ladies and gen­tle­men, the on­ly ex­am­ples we have to go on are the ex­am­ples in the Mid­dle East at this time. You could see what would have hap­pened to Trinidad and To­ba­go. "The one mis­take that we in Trinidad would make is to as­sume that can­not hap­pen in this coun­try. "In­deed my friends, it can and it will if we do not con­duct our busi­ness in a man­ner that is de­signed to pre­vent it."

Man­ning said many peo­ple felt that gov­er­nance of T&T was an easy thing. He said T&T was not an easy coun­try to gov­ern. He said: "It is a dif­fi­cult coun­try to gov­ern and you can on­ly gov­ern it prop­er­ly and keep it on an even keel if you un­der­stand that pru­dence is nec­es­sary in your pub­lic af­fairs." Man­ning said bi­as­es and prej­u­dices must not form part of gov­er­nance in T&T. "So that if Wat­son Duke be­lieves that he got away... it is easy to see some­thing isn't right. Is it sell­out or buy­out? If you say sell­out, some­body had to buy it. So it is not Mr Duke alone, you know. They feel that be­cause you don't say any­thing you can't say any­thing," he said. He ad­vised PNM sup­port­ers and mem­bers to take note of what was go­ing on in T&T since the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice. He asked sup­port­ers not to fall for the Gov­ern­ment pub­lic re­la­tions cam­paign.

He then re­ferred to the con­tro­ver­sial church which was be­ing con­struct­ed by Rev Ju­liana Pe­na in Gu­napo. "What does a church have to do with the gov­er­nance of T&T, some­body tell me please?" Man­ning asked. In re­sponse to oth­er mat­ters about his role as prime min­is­ter, Man­ning asked: "How come they eh lock me up yet?" He said: "If pub­lic ser­vants be­lieve they get­ting any house, they have an­oth­er thought com­ing." He said he in­tend­ed to take le­gal ac­tion in the mat­ter over the al­leged il­le­gal­i­ty of ac­tions by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) un­der his tenure as Prime Min­is­ter. "I go have my day in court. I not wild­ing them. I will have a field day when I start to take ac­tion against them in court,"he said.