PNM remembers Manning on 10-year anniversary of his death

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Ten years af­ter the death of for­mer prime min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Patrick Man­ning, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne says he is con­vinced Man­ning would have been proud of the par­ty in its cur­rent form and would have been work­ing along­side its mem­bers to re­turn it to gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing on the an­niver­sary of Man­ning’s pass­ing yes­ter­day, Browne de­scribed the for­mer leader as in­sep­a­ra­ble from the PNM and said his in­flu­ence con­tin­ues to shape the par­ty’s di­rec­tion a decade af­ter his death.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so paid an emo­tion­al trib­ute to Man­ning, de­scrib­ing him as the leader who res­cued the PNM from one of the dark­est pe­ri­ods in its his­to­ry and helped shape a new gen­er­a­tion of par­ty lead­ers.

“Ten years ago to­day, our na­tion lost one of its most con­se­quen­tial sons, and the PNM lost the man who, more than most, breathed po­lit­i­cal life back in­to this par­ty at one of its low­est points,” Beck­les said.

She re­called Man­ning’s lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the PNM’s crush­ing 1986 elec­tion de­feat, when the par­ty was re­duced to just three par­lia­men­tary seats.

“I re­mem­ber well the Patrick Man­ning who re­built the PNM from the ash­es of 1986 — who took a par­ty re­duced to three seats and, with­in a gen­er­a­tion, re­stored it to gov­ern­ment not once, but three times,” she said.

“That is the Man­ning I choose to re­mem­ber to­day: not sim­ply as a for­mer prime min­is­ter, but as the leader who opened the door for a gen­er­a­tion of us to walk through.”

Beck­les said her own po­lit­i­cal ca­reer was made pos­si­ble through Man­ning’s will­ing­ness to men­tor younger mem­bers of the par­ty.

“Those op­por­tu­ni­ties did not come by ac­ci­dent. They came be­cause Patrick Man­ning be­lieved in build­ing a bench, in trust­ing oth­ers with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and in giv­ing young PN­Mites room to grow in­to pub­lic ser­vice.”

Browne echoed those sen­ti­ments, say­ing Man­ning’s con­tri­bu­tion to the par­ty re­mained en­dur­ing.

“His con­tri­bu­tion to our jour­ney is one that we would al­ways em­brace,” Browne said.

“I know that he was proud of the lega­cy that he in­her­it­ed from his pre­de­ces­sors, and hav­ing him­self served in op­po­si­tion pre­vi­ous­ly, and as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion pre­vi­ous­ly, I’m cer­tain that he would be proud of the PNM of to­day.”

Browne said if Man­ning were still alive, he be­lieved he would be stand­ing along­side par­ty mem­bers as they sought to re­gain of­fice.

“If he were here, he would be work­ing shoul­der-to-shoul­der with the mem­bers of this par­ty to help get us back in­to of­fice, be­cause he would know that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go would ben­e­fit from that change,” Browne said.

He said the an­niver­sary was more than a mo­ment of re­mem­brance, de­scrib­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the par­ty to recom­mit it­self to the val­ues Man­ning cham­pi­oned through­out his pub­lic life.

“It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us at the Op­po­si­tion to pause, to re­flect on his lega­cy and lead­er­ship of this par­ty, the coun­try and the re­gion as very much a Caribbean man, and to recom­mit our­selves in Trinidad and To­ba­go to, in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­u­ing his lega­cy of fo­cus­ing on young peo­ple and the fu­ture of our coun­try and re­gion.”

Beck­les al­so re­flect­ed on Man­ning’s vi­sion for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, say­ing many of his am­bi­tions con­tin­ued to res­onate to­day.

“He was a man of vi­sion. Vi­sion 2020 spoke to an am­bi­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go that many of us still car­ry with us. He un­der­stood the en­er­gy sec­tor like few oth­ers, he built, he housed, he ed­u­cat­ed, and he nev­er lost his con­vic­tion that this twin-is­land Re­pub­lic could stand among the de­vel­oped na­tions of the world,” she said.

She ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Man­ning’s wid­ow, Hazel Man­ning, and their fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning, who now rep­re­sents the same con­stituen­cy once held by his fa­ther.

“Ten years on, the PNM re­mains grate­ful for his ser­vice and mind­ful of the shoul­ders on which this par­ty stands,” Beck­les said.

Bri­an Man­ning al­so paid trib­ute to his fa­ther on so­cial me­dia, writ­ing: “You are for­ev­er in our hearts and minds. Rest in peace Dad.”

He ac­com­pa­nied the mes­sage with the well-known pas­sage from for­mer Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt, “The Man in the Are­na,” cel­e­brat­ing those who ded­i­cate them­selves to pub­lic ser­vice de­spite crit­i­cism and set­backs.

Patrick Man­ning re­mains one of T&T most con­se­quen­tial post-In­de­pen­dence po­lit­i­cal fig­ures. First elect­ed to Par­lia­ment in 1970 as MP for San Fer­nan­do East, he lat­er be­came PNM leader and served as prime min­is­ter from 1991 to 1995 and again from 2001 to 2010.

His ad­min­is­tra­tions over­saw sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­ture projects, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre and the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, while al­so ad­vanc­ing ini­tia­tives in ed­u­ca­tion, hous­ing and re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. He was al­so recog­nised for cham­pi­oning deep­er Caribbean in­te­gra­tion through the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

Man­ning died on Ju­ly 2, 2016, at the age of 69 af­ter suf­fer­ing com­pli­ca­tions from a stroke.