AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah

@guardian.co.tt

Re­porter

His words were sharp. His vi­sion, trans­for­ma­tive. And his lega­cy, long­stand­ing.

Patrick Au­gus­tus Mervyn Man­ning is T&T’s longest-serv­ing prime min­is­ter, and the mag­ni­tude of his tenure and time in pol­i­tics has left an in­deli­ble mark on the na­tion’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape. Ten years af­ter his pass­ing on Ju­ly 2, 2016, his decades of ser­vice as a states­man and leader re­main deeply wo­ven in­to the very fab­ric of this na­tion’s iden­ti­ty.

Man­ning grew up in a po­lit­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly ac­tive fam­i­ly, work­ing ear­ly on with PNM groups in San Fer­nan­do. Yet, this back­ground wasn’t ini­tial­ly enough to spark a per­son­al de­sire to en­ter the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

As a boy, he at­tend­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, where school prin­ci­pal Broth­er Michael Samuel would lat­er de­scribe the fu­ture prime min­is­ter as a “very nor­mal child in class, wit­ty and some­what dis­tract­ing at times but a good stu­dent.”

Man­ning, as he in­tend­ed, chose a pro­fes­sion worlds apart from gov­er­nance. He at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Mona Cam­pus, grad­u­at­ing with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Ge­ol­o­gy, and re­turned home to work as a ge­ol­o­gist for Tex­a­co Trinidad Inc.

How­ev­er, a press­ing call was echo­ing from the PNM camp for young pro­fes­sion­als to step in­to lead­er­ship. Man­ning hes­i­tat­ed. Man­ning said he was quite re­luc­tant to give up a lu­cra­tive ca­reer in the lo­cal oil in­dus­try.

“It was on­ly af­ter a lot of soul-search­ing that I de­cid­ed to give it a try,” Man­ning told the Trinidad Guardian in 1991.

Af­ter be­ing per­son­al­ly screened by the “Fa­ther of the Na­tion,” Dr Er­ic Williams, Man­ning suc­cess­ful­ly ran for of­fice and be­came a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment in 1971.

Dr Williams sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly moved the young MP through an ex­ten­sive ar­ray of port­fo­lios. Man­ning served as a par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pe­tro­le­um and Mines and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, and lat­er held ju­nior min­is­te­r­i­al posts in the Min­istry of Works and the Min­istry of Fi­nance (the lat­ter, a po­si­tion his son, Bri­an Man­ning, would as­sume decades lat­er).

He even­tu­al­ly rose to lead the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the Min­istry of In­dus­try and Com­merce. Ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, Dr Williams in­tend­ed for him to gain a wealth of foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge across these di­verse sec­tors.

But fol­low­ing Dr Williams’ death, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment en­tered a sea­son of se­vere de­cline. Pub­lic ap­proval plum­met­ed, re­sult­ing in the his­toric 1986 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. The PNM suf­fered its first ma­jor po­lit­i­cal crash, with a land­slide de­feat by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR). This re­duced the par­ty to just three par­lia­men­tary seats and left even the sit­ting prime min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader, George Cham­bers, with­out his seat.

Out of the po­lit­i­cal ash­es and tur­moil, Man­ning emerged as the new po­lit­i­cal leader. And his mis­sion was ‘to re­build’ as he firm­ly be­lieved that “the PNM was down, but not out.”

His rea­son for the par­ty’s crush­ing loss was a truth he was not afraid to ad­mit.

“We have paid the price for drift­ing away from our her­itage and for not lis­ten­ing suf­fi­cient­ly to the cries and ex­hor­ta­tions of our peo­ple for change,” he said up­on ac­cept­ing lead­er­ship of the PNM.

Un­der his lead­er­ship, the par­ty en­gi­neered a mas­sive po­lit­i­cal come­back just five years lat­er, re­turn­ing to gov­ern­ment in 1991.

A key com­po­nent of this res­ur­rec­tion was Man­ning’s strat­e­gy of ap­point­ing en­tire­ly new faces to the Sen­ate and the par­ty ex­ec­u­tive.

This re­struc­tur­ing brought for­ward a new van­guard of politi­cians who would dom­i­nate Trinida­di­an pol­i­tics for the next gen­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing Colm Im­bert, Wen­dell Mot­t­ley and fu­ture prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“This vic­to­ry tonight is not my vic­to­ry. It is God’s vic­to­ry,” a tri­umphant Man­ning told ju­bi­lant sup­port­ers on elec­tion night.

“It is my pe­ri­od in op­po­si­tion that I have con­sid­ered more en­light­en­ing,” he told the Guardian, re­flect­ing on his jour­ney.

“I was able to get a good un­der­stand­ing of the peo­ple of T&T.”

Patrick Man­ning would go on to serve a to­tal of 12 years as prime min­is­ter. He is wide­ly re­mem­bered for mod­ernising T&T’s econ­o­my, el­e­vat­ing its diplo­mat­ic pow­er on the world stage and re­shap­ing the phys­i­cal sky­line of the cap­i­tal city. Un­der his tenure, Port-of-Spain was trans­formed by the con­struc­tion of the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) and the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza.

Be­yond the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, he drove the ex­pan­sion of the At­lantic LNG project in Point Fortin, po­si­tion­ing T&T as a pre­mier glob­al ex­porter of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas. He es­tab­lished the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) to safe­guard sur­plus en­er­gy rev­enues for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

He al­so drove so­cial de­vel­op­ment, in­tro­duc­ing the land­mark Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, mak­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion free for cit­i­zens, and found­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) to pro­vide spe­cialised tech­ni­cal train­ing. It was all part of his in­fa­mous “Vi­sion 20/20” de­vel­op­ment plan.

Though he demit­ted of­fice in 2010 and re­tired from pub­lic life in lat­er years, Man­ning is re­mem­bered to­day not just for his po­lit­i­cal acu­men, but for his char­ac­ter as a states­man.

As he had in­tend­ed when he first en­tered pol­i­tics, Patrick Man­ning lived by one main prin­ci­ple to the very end. His vi­sion was nev­er just about win­ning the next elec­tion, but about build­ing and up­lift­ing the next gen­er­a­tion.