Ken Ali

A mere 13 months ago the world was at his feet. Patrick Man­ning, bear­ing the ex­alt­ed ti­tle of Prime Min­is­ter, had just host­ed the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, a con­fer­ence that hud­dles lead­ers of the hemi­sphere. Man­ning rubbed shoul­ders with US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, with­in months of the lat­ter's pres­i­den­cy. Man­ning had as­signed about $1 bil­lion to stage the con­fer­ence, in spite of pub­lic out­rage over the crit­i­cal and press­ing ur­gency of con­fronting pover­ty, crime and oth­er so­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sues. In­deed, there was a dou­ble dose from Man­ning, hav­ing al­ready com­mit­ted him­self to host­ing a con­fer­ence of Com­mon­wealth lead­ers.�That par­ley made him chair­man of the 54-mem­ber group of na­tions, an ho­n­our he held un­til Mon­day.

Man­ning not on­ly weath­ered the storm over the du­bi­ous de­ci­sion to dole out pre­cious funds to briefly as­sume the role of in­ter­na­tion­al states­man but he al­so stout­ly de­fend­ed the move. He got re­sound­ing sup­port from min­is­te­r­i­al co­horts, who in­sist­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go would reap rich re­wards. The host­ing of the con­fer­ences may have been a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in Man­ning's po­lit­i­cal ca­reer but there were al­so piv­otal rea­sons, not the least be­ing his vir­tu­al cud­dling of Calder Hart in spite of dark cor­rup­tion claims. Wild spend­ing–the Tarou­ba Sta­di­um is not yet com­plet­ed–left an en­light­ened and frus­trat­ed na­tion aghast and de­mor­alised. Then, in a step that was be­wil­der­ing, even by Man­ning's clum­sy stan­dards, he opt­ed to sum­mon a gen­er­al elec­tion at the height of Kam­la­ma­nia.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, doff­ing her im­age as sub­servient to en­trenched Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day, had mus­tered the will to con­front her po­lit­i­cal gu­ru. Her vic­to­ry not on­ly an­i­mat­ed women but gal­vanised a na­tion around a leader who ap­peared the an­tithe­sis to the pre­vail­ing max­i­mum lead­ers. The rest may, in­deed, be his­to­ry. But Man­ning, who nev­er trou­bled the in­tel­lec­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty, would have fur­ther sul­lied his lega­cy, one in which he tout­ed de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus even while 20 per cent of the pop­u­lace laboured un­der the pover­ty lev­el. His ig­no­min­ious res­ig­na­tion last night as PNM boss brings to an end a po­lit­i­cal chap­ter of a man who, vir­tu­al­ly by ac­ci­dent, rose to be­come Prime Min­is­ter at age 44. In that re­spect, he was the most for­tu­nate lo­cal politi­cian of his gen­er­a­tion. Twen­ty years lat­er, his hung shoul­ders and for­lorn look por­trayed his new re­al­i­ty.