In a week of SEA examinations and raging debates in Parliament, the fifth anniversary of the passing of former prime minister Patrick Manning slipped by quietly.
It was on the morning of July 2, five years ago, that Mr Manning, the longest-serving Member of Parliament in the country’s history, passed.
Two days before, on June 30, 2016, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. Prior to that, he was recovering from a stroke he had suffered in January 2012.
As with any politician, the views of whether he served well or not are often coloured by the political side on which one sits.
But the tributes that were paid after his passing showed that regardless of political affiliations, most agreed that he had left a mark on the nation if only for the visions that drove him.
As a Minister of Energy and Natural Resources early in his career, he was instrumental in the development of the Point Lisas estate and the country’s energy industry at large.
So, as prime minister, he was in a good position to know that energy would not sustain us and that we needed diversification.
Among his visions was the creation of a thermo-plastics industry via a polypropylene plant. He felt the downstream manufacturing potentials of plastics were immense and promised to make it a focus of his new term prior to losing the 2010 general elections.
He wanted to build an aluminum smelter to also expand the manufacturing sector into producing raw materials for vehicles and aircraft and had announced a national highway plan with six highways criss-crossing the country, not just for ease of transport, but to develop more economic spaces for the spread of businesses and industries.
As grand as it seemed at the time, he felt a rapid rail was not out of reach and would have boosted productivity by cutting down the long hours spent in traffic.
His too, was a vision of offshore patrol vessels, hoping to cut off the supply chain of illegal drugs and weapons into the country. With energy still our major revenue earner, he was instrumental in the development of methanol and ammonia products and was aiming to introduce another train at Atlantic LNG to convert and export more natural gas.
His work to expand the energy sector was heralded even by those politically opposed to him.
Former UNC energy minister Kevin Ramnarine wrote of Mr Manning in 2016, “As far as the energy sector is concerned he always acted to place the national interest and the bigger picture ahead of all else. If today we enjoy the best standard of living in the Caribbean it is because of his decisions around the monetisation of our natural gas resources.”
As prime minister, he also introduced Government Assisted Tertiary Education (GATE), giving free tertiary education to thousands for the first time ever in T&T.
Today, as the country battles the social and economic challenges of COVID-19, we are helped by withdrawals from the Heritage and Stabilisation Fund (HSF), created in March 2007 under Mr Manning’s leadership.
He was not without errors, most memorably two snap elections that the PNM lost, and his broad trust in Udecott chairman Calder Hart divided his Cabinet and preceded his final defeat at the polls.
However, few could deny that through the good and the bad, he had T&T at heart.
Whether for his graceful relations with his opposite House member Basdeo Panday, or his trademark political war cry—“We will beat them in the east, we will beat them in the west...”—Mr Manning’s memories have mostly been warm across the political spectrum.
Above all, it is for the service he gave during his political run from 1971 to 2015, that he earned his place as one of the most valuable politicians T&T has ever had.
Five years later, may he continue to rest in peace.