With­out want­i­ng to seem un­grate­ful and un­mind­ful of the 40-plus years of Mr Patrick Man­ning's ser­vice to this coun­try as MP, en­er­gy min­is­ter, fi­nance min­is­ter and Prime Min­is­ter, af­ter be­ing on sick leave for a year from the Par­lia­ment, it is time that he gives de­fin­i­tive word that he may be un­fit to fin­ish this term of of­fice.

In do­ing so, he would be clear­ing the way for a by-elec­tion and a ful­ly ca­pa­ble MP to at­tend to the needs of con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do East. A healthy MP would al­so be able to add weight to the ef­forts of the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in the cut and thrust of de­bate in the Par­lia­ment. Yes­ter­day marked one year since the "slight stroke" hit Mr Man­ning.

The Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has been un­der­stand­ing and al­lowed the for­mer PNM leader to re­cu­per­ate, in­clu­sive of an ex­tend­ed stay out­side of the coun­try be­ing treat­ed at an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-re­put­ed health in­sti­tu­tion. But it can­not be ex­pect­ed that the Speak­er will con­tin­ue in­def­i­nite­ly to grant ex­ten­sions. A re­peat of the dis­grace­ful ex­am­ple of the late PNM MP Gor­don Drap­er who spent most of one term abroad un­der­tak­ing per­son­al work con­tracts.

Sure­ly Mr Man­ning will not want to fol­low the ex­am­ple of Mr Drap­er; he will cer­tain­ly not want his last term in of­fice to be marred by be­ing an ab­sen­tee land­lord. He must know that be­ing away from the House he was elect­ed to serve is not about giv­ing him an in­def­i­nite time line; rather it is about rep­re­sen­ta­tion of con­stituents.

More­over, Mr Man­ning has been re­ceiv­ing ex­ten­sion af­ter ex­ten­sion with­out giv­ing the slight­est in­for­ma­tion on the state of his health, the prog­no­sis for the fu­ture and when he is re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ex­pect­ed to be back on the job. There is a view that he still har­bours the in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to the po­lit­i­cal fray, even pos­si­bly mak­ing an at­tempt to some­how re­gain po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the PNM and just pos­si­bly be­com­ing prime min­is­ter again.

Those maybe le­git­i­mate am­bi­tions to have but they can­not be car­ried out at the ex­pense of the prop­er func­tion­ing of the Par­lia­ment. In the in­stance of the lat­ter point, Mr Man­ning can­not be hang­ing on to qual­i­fy for the salary of an MP.

As a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Par­lia­men­tar­i­an Mr Man­ning has a sub­stan­tial pen­sion, plus, as has been the in­stance of for­mer prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents, the state has paid for med­ical treat­ment and will no doubt do so again if it be­comes nec­es­sary. The PNM and the Par­lia­ment have been tact­ful about Mr Man­ning's year-long ab­sence.

How­ev­er, if af­ter a year and there is still no prospect of his be­ing able to re­turn, then it is un­like­ly he will ever be able to and he should step down. To avoid re­oc­cur­rences of an ex­tend­ed leave, per­haps Par­lia­ment should amend the stand­ing or­ders to set a rea­son­able lim­it on how long or how of­ten an MP may be ab­sent and still re­tain a seat.