Yvonne Ba­boolal

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning may be apol­o­gis­ing to PNM sup­port­ers ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed when he called a gen­er­al elec­tion for May 2010 re­sult­ing in the par­ty los­ing the gov­ern­ment al­most three years be­fore the end of its con­sti­tu­tion­al tenure. Con­rad Enill, for­mer PNM chair­man and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion which Man­ning lead, was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the apol­o­gy Man­ning of­fered on Fri­day to those who may have been "dis­en­fran­chised" by the poli­cies of his ad­min­is­tra­tion. Man­ning al­so ex­pressed the in­ten­tion to ex­it the po­lit­i­cal are­na. He had made these dis­clo­sures at a news con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice last Fri­day.

The apol­o­gy left some be­fud­dled, both with­in and 'with­out' the par­ty, as the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter did not make it clear to whom the apol­o­gy was be­ing di­rect­ed. Enill says he be­lieved Man­ning was apol­o­gis­ing to PNM sup­port­ers. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Enill said: "When he de­cid­ed to call an elec­tion, he in­di­cat­ed that he called it on his own ini­tia­tive and that he had been plan­ning it for some time. "The out­come was, there­fore, ba­si­cal­ly a re­sult of his own de­lib­er­ate judge­ment. "The par­ty moved from gov­er­nance to op­po­si­tion and this cre­at­ed a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty for many peo­ple. "I think it may not have dawned on him at the time the im­pact that los­ing the elec­tion would have on his fol­low­ers who be­lieved in the val­ues and prin­ci­ples of the PNM."

Con­tin­u­ing, he said, "Many be­lieved (that) in call­ing an elec­tion Man­ning should have known enough work was not done. "I think Man­ning is say­ing, on re­flec­tion, that was an er­ror, and to those af­fect­ed he wished to apol­o­gise to them. "I don't read any­thing else in­to it." Enill, not­ing that Man­ning made a clear state­ment that he was not re­turn­ing to pol­i­tics and that he was sup­port­ing the in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader, said: "This is the be­gin­ning of the process of re­in­forc­ing the par­ty. "Man­ning has said he does not wish to con­tin­ue (in pol­i­tics) and he has told his con­stituents to find a suc­ces­sor.

"Sup­port­ers who were ex­pect­ing his re­turn now have a very clear state­ment from him that he is not re­turn­ing and that they should now fo­cus on build­ing the par­ty with the cur­rent leader. "They do not have to wor­ry if he re­turns or not." While Man­ning has de­clared his plan to bow out of the po­lit­i­cal race, he may still be in­volved in the par­ty be­hind the scenes. Ac­cord­ing to Enill, Man­ning's role in the par­ty may change. "He has ex­pe­ri­ence. He un­der­stands the pol­i­tics of T&T and the Caribbean and the field of en­er­gy. "The par­ty will have to use some of his knowl­edge and ex­per­tise. I ex­pect Man­ning will con­tin­ue but he will play a dif­fer­ent role.

Asked if Man­ning had reached a new lev­el of spir­i­tu­al en­light­en­ment, Enill said, "Like every­thing else, there are dif­fer­ent phas­es in a po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. "Man­ning had a very good run in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer but there comes a time when new lead­er­ship is re­quired. "We are see­ing the emer­gence of a new po­lit­i­cal land­scape which re­quires a dif­fer­ent lead­er­ship," Enill said.