Gail Alexan­der

Late for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning will be for­ev­er re­mem­bered for his pow­er­ful ex­am­ple of lead­er­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty with­in T&T and through­out Latin Amer­i­ca, US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has said.

Oba­ma made the com­ment in a con­do­lence let­ter to Man­ning's fam­i­ly, which was post­ed on Man­ning's still ac­tive Face­book page yes­ter­day.

Man­ning died on Ju­ly 2 at age 69 af­ter be­ing di­ag­nosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a rare, ag­gres­sive can­cer, on June 30 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He was laid to rest on Ju­ly 9 af­ter a state fu­ner­al.

In a let­ter dat­ed Ju­ly 11 to Man­ning's wife Hazel, Oba­ma stat­ed: "On be­half of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, I ex­tend my deep­est con­do­lences on your hus­band's pass­ing. Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning was guid­ed by his com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing T&T in our time and for gen­er­a­tions to come.

"Through his ser­vice, he en­deav­oured to ex­press pos­si­bil­i­ty in the lives of his fel­low cit­i­zens and in so do­ing, he helped change the life of his coun­try. His lega­cy will live on and for his pow­er­ful ex­am­ple of lead­er­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty - - with­in T&T and through­out Latin Amer­i­ca - he will be for­ev­er re­mem­bered.

"At this dif­fi­cult time, please know Michelle and I are keep­ing you, Bri­an and David in our thoughts."

Oba­ma al­so singed the let­ter.

Oba­ma had met Man­ning in 2009 when T&T host­ed the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as - one of Man­ning's pi­o­neer­ing ini­tia­tives. This in­volved North, South and Cen­tral (Latin) Amer­i­can lead­ers.

The Sum­mit, which "in­tro­duced" Oba­ma to his hemi­spher­ic col­league lead­ers, was one of his first en­gage­ments soon af­ter as­sum­ing the US Pres­i­den­cy. It was seen as his­toric for the new plank of el­e­va­tion Oba­ma sought to in­tro­duce con­cern­ing US/Cu­ba re­la­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly, and his state­ment that the US was seek­ing a new be­gin­ning with Cu­ba fol­low­ing decades of a US em­bar­go against Cu­ba and frosty re­la­tions with Venezuela.

Fam­i­ly sources yes­ter­day con­firmed a ser­vice will be held in San Fer­nan­do on Au­gust 12 to mark the 40-day pe­ri­od af­ter Man­ning's death.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the PM Stu­art Young said queries on the Man­ning fam­i­ly's re­jec­tion of the of­fer of the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic T&T for Man­ning were not ad­dressed at Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said last week­end that he would rec­om­mend the ORTT for Man­ning in up­com­ing Au­gust 31 In­de­pen­dence awards. But the Man­ning fam­i­ly in­stead re­it­er­at­ed that the best way to ho­n­our Man­ning's life would be the re-es­tab­lish­ment and ex­pan­sion of the Di­vine Echoes Or­ches­tra ini­tia­tive and es­tab­lish­ment of the Patrick Man­ning De­vel­op­ment Fund at the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cen­tre.

Both Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day re­fused the ORTT in 2014 af­ter then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar rec­om­mend­ed they re­ceive it.