Gail Alexan­der

"Po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, but nev­er en­e­mies."

So said for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day of his po­lit­i­cal col­league, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Pan­day, who re­turned from abroad last week, spoke about Man­ning, who died on Ju­ly 2 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He had been di­ag­nosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a rare, ag­gres­sive can­cer of the blood. Man­ning was laid to rest on Ju­ly 9 fol­low­ing a state fu­ner­al.

Man­ning and Pan­day who had re­spec­tive­ly led the Peo­ples' Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), hold­ing of­fice at pe­ri­ods be­tween 1991 and 2010, were the lead­ing po­lit­i­cal fig­ures of that pe­ri­od, fac­ing bat­tle with each oth­er when they held gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion po­si­tions at var­i­ous pe­ri­ods. To­wards the end of their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers, they al­so faced sim­i­lar in­ter­nal is­sues in their par­ties.

Pan­day, who was abroad when he re­ceived word of Man­ning's death, said, "I'd known for some time his health was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing. My daugh­ter and his son speak of­ten, but when I heard of his death, I was shocked since I didn't know he was ail­ing so bad­ly.

"I had seen him at a Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege re­union a few years ago and went to the hos­pi­tal to see him when he had his stroke in 2012. He knew it was me even though he couldn't speak, but I hadn't see him since."

Not­ing the high ac­co­lades for Man­ning af­ter he died, Pan­day said, "T&T peo­ple wait un­til you die to say things, we're a na­tion of hyp­ocrites."

While not ad­mit­ting to shed­ding tears, Pan­day said, "The death of any hu­man be­ing is a loss to all hu­man­i­ty, like all of us he did what he thought was right.

"There wasn't a lev­el of mud­sling­ing, the rea­sons be­ing he had his po­lit­i­cal view and I had mine. They may have co­in­cid­ed at some time, but they were dif­fer­ent."

Any re­grets? "Not re­al­ly, we both did what we thought was nec­es­sary, we may not have al­ways been right. It's easy to look back­wards but at the time, you take the best de­ci­sion you can in­clud­ing in­flu­ences by all kinds of forces around and the cir­cum­stances you're in."

'T&T's pol­i­tics is racist'

Asked if he felt Man­ning was a "racist" as SDMS leader Sat Ma­haraj claimed, Pan­day said, "The pol­i­tics of T&T is about race and has been for a very long time.

It's very dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish whether a de­ci­sion is po­lit­i­cal or racist as they're some­times iden­ti­cal. The pol­i­tics has al­way been iden­ti­fied with race and vice ver­sa and some­times the two are in­dis­tin­guish­able. When one takes a de­ci­sion, some may say it's racist, oth­ers say po­lit­i­cal, but T&T's pol­i­tics is racist."

He said there were some PNM de­ci­sions which turned out to be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, but de­ci­sions may have been "po­lit­i­cal or racist or both."

"But I found him to be quite pleas­ant as a per­son and we got along very well at the per­son­al lev­el. At the par­lia­men­tary lev­el, we ar­gued dif­fer­ent points and had dif­fer­ent views. It didn't de­gen­er­ate to a low lev­el or race.

"The Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T in a so­ci­ety that is de­mo­graph­i­cal­ly di­vid­ed as it is, is bound to en­cour­age the pol­i­tics of race. But it isn't fair to the peo­ple, T&T or the politi­cians.

"The on­ly way for­ward is to change the Con­sti­tu­tion. But nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or Op­po­si­tion leader want con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form. If the Con­sti­tu­tion con­tin­ues in present form, the PNM could win the 2020 elec­tion."

'Mooni­lal does not have po­lit­i­cal know-how'

Not­ing the UNC lost the Rien­zi Com­plex which was the par­ty's home un­der his lead­er­ship, Pan­day said the UNC will re­main in op­po­si­tion for 15 years if it con­test­ed the 2020 polls un­der the present lead­er­ship. He al­so did not think MP Roodal Mooni­lal could "do it."

"He doesn't have the po­lit­i­cal know-how and at­ti­tude. It takes quite a com­bi­na­tion to lead a par­ty suc­cess­ful­ly. I don't think he has it. The par­ty can on­ly rise again if mem­bers have free, fair polls."

On whether his daugh­ter Mick­ela would take up the ba­ton, he said that was a mat­ter for her.

For now, Pan­day is work­ing on his book and watch­ing how his one-time as­so­ciate Don­ald Trump–who staged the 1999 Miss Uni­verse pageant un­der Pan­day's tenure–fares in the US Pres­i­den­tial polls.

"I'll nev­er give up the po­lit­i­cal strug­gle. It would be trea­so­nous not to at­tempt to make my coun­try a bet­ter place. I guess Mr Man­ning felt the same."

Pan­day, 83, added, "I in­tend to be around for a long time."