Yvonne Webb

On the very day that the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is sched­uled to de­ter­mine the fate of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, he has left for Cu­ba for med­ical treat­ment.Man­ning has writ­ten to Speak­er of the House Wade Mark, ask­ing for a leave of ab­sence. In the let­ter, a copy of which was sent to the me­dia, Man­ning said he was sched­uled to leave this morn­ing for Cu­ba, for med­ical at­ten­tion and would re­turn on May 20.He has asked that he be ex­cused from all sit­tings of the House and its com­mit­tees dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

Reached in Cou­va, where the Par­lia­ment was en­gaged with the ju­di­cia­ry in a crick­et match, Mark said he had not yet re­ceived a copy of the let­ter.He says he may re­ceive it when he gets to his of­fice this morn­ing.Un­der the cir­cum­stances, he said, he was not in po­si­tion to say what ac­tion the House would take.Man­ning said arrange­ments for his trip to Cu­ba, where he did heart and kid­ney surg­eries in the past, were made since April, long be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee found him guilty of con­tempt of Par­lia­ment.He said his trav­el sched­ule was firmed up last Wednes­day, the day he pur­chased his air­line tick­et.

Mean­while, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Ma­haraj has come out in sup­port of Man­ning in his bid to have le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in his con­tempt of Par­lia­ment mat­ter.Ma­haraj says he finds it odd that a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who finds him­self be­fore a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee where the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers are from the rul­ing par­ty, for a mat­ter in which he faces sus­pen­sion or ex­pul­sion, is not en­ti­tled to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion."That is an out­dat­ed law which no mod­ern court com­mit­ted to the prin­ci­ples of jus­tice would want to fol­low," Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day."There­fore, the Par­lia­ment should take a new di­men­sion, a new road, and set the ex­am­ple.

"If you can­not have jus­tice in ad­min­is­ter­ing of a com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment to give peo­ple the right to have le­gal reprre­sen­ta­tion, then how could the Par­lia­ment ar­tic­u­late a fight against in­jus­tices at the na­tion­al lev­el?" Man­ning was found guilty of con­tempt of Par­lia­ment by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for mak­ing state­ments in No­vem­ber 2010, about the con­struc­tion of the pri­vate res­i­dence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at Palmiste in South Trinidad.He said the house cost $150 mil­lion, a charge which Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­nied.Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er sus­b­se­quent­ly filed a mo­tion for Man­ning to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee.

Man­ning, how­ev­er, re­fused to an­swer the case against him with­out the pres­ence of his lawyers to ques­tion mem­bers of the com­mit­tee.He has since filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion in the High Court against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on the is­sue. The com­mit­tee's re­port was tabled in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is sched­uled to meet to­day to dis­cuss the re­port and de­ter­mine what penal­ty should be im­posed against Man­ning, this coun­try's longest serv­ing par­lia­men­tar­i­an, who re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed his 40th an­niver­sary as the PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tive for San Fer­nan­do East.

The range of pos­si­ble penal­ties in­cludes ex­pul­sion, sus­pen­sion, rep­ri­mand, or a de­mand for an apol­o­gy.In a two-sen­tence state­ment on Sat­ur­day, Man­ning said: "I have been treat­ed very, very un­fair­ly by the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of the Par­lia­ment and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go."He said, how­ev­er, that he was great­ly heart­ened "by the unan­i­mous sup­port of my par­lia­men­tary col­leagues of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment who have all stood up against this ob­vi­ous in­jus­tice."