Tony Fras­er

?The core of this col­umn was writ­ten on April 18, on a flight from New York to Port-of-Spain.

There were two es­sen­tial fail­ings which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the de­cline and fall of Patrick Man­ning: an in­flat­ed ego that grew with "suc­cess" based on the eco­nom­ic rents drawn on the en­er­gy sec­tor, rents that he felt he had gift­ed to the na­tion based on the fact that the de­ci­sions to mon­e­tise and com­mer­cialise the nat­ur­al gas in­dus­try in its mod­ern in­car­na­tion were tak­en un­der his gov­ern­ments. The sec­ond re­sult­ed from the first: he be­ing so blind­ed by his own po­lit­i­cal ad­vance, his em­per­or­ship, that he was un­able to dis­cern that the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture was chang­ing on him. So daz­zled was he by his own bright light that he could not see that large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion were no longer will­ing to leave it to the Gov­ern­ment and most of all to the Prime Min­is­ter to de­ter­mine what they should ac­cept and how they should in­ter­act with the Gov­ern­ment. Man­ning had be­come so en­thralled by his own em­i­nence that he adopt­ed the habit of re­fer­ring to him­self in the third per­son as the "Prime Min­is­ter." He cul­ti­vat­ed his em­i­nence with such rev­er­ence that it was adopt­ed by his wife Hazel. She in­fa­mous­ly con­clud­ed once that "the Prime Min­is­ter has spo­ken" and there­fore all ar­gu­ment and con­tention on any mat­ter that he so con­clud­ed on had come to an end.

One re­sult of Man­ning's over-blown ego is that he did not think it im­por­tant to add lu­cid and ra­tio­nal ar­gu­ments to any de­ci­sion tak­en by his Gov­ern­ment, more like­ly him­self. Whether the mat­ters were re­lat­ed to an in­dus­tri­al strat­e­gy which in­volved the es­tab­lish­ment of a large smelter in­dus­try that dis­placed whole com­mu­ni­ties and the way of life of peo­ple, or the forced ac­qui­si­tion of a recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ty of a com­mu­ni­ty, he would tell these com­mu­ni­ties to find an­oth­er play­field for their chil­dren and dis­parag­ing­ly dis­miss the cul­ture which placed val­ue on: "agouti and man­i­cou, bo­di and pump­kin." Then there were his pres­i­den­tial am­bi­tions. They con­sumed him as he an­gled to get the re­quired par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty which would al­low him to uni­lat­er­al­ly al­ter the Con­sti­tu­tion to, like Napoleon, crown him­self em­per­or. Po­lit­i­cal leader Man­ning sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly elim­i­nat­ed all pos­si­ble op­po­si­tion to his ab­solute rule with­in the PNM and gath­ered around him syco­phants and those with­out po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and a base to be able to pose a chal­lenge to his dic­ta­to­r­i­al rule. In the process he stymied the evo­lu­tion of a mod­ern po­lit­i­cal par­ty with se­ri­ous in­sti­tu­tions and a fo­cus oth­er than be­ing an elec­tion ma­chin­ery to put an oli­garchy in­to of­fice; but more of this an­oth­er time. Kei­th Row­ley was the on­ly one Man­ning was not able to dom­i­nate and ditch and it was Row­ley who in­sti­gat­ed the process which ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ed in his down­fall. Ear­ly on Muriel Don­awa-Mc David­son gave a clue to Man­ning's am­bi­tions and the di­rec­tions he had mapped out for the "Patrick Na­tion­al Move­ment." Go­ing back to the first known time when he want­ed to elim­i­nate Pen­ny Beck­les, Val­ley called him a "vin­dic­tive man." The pen­ny should have dropped ear­ly on when he or­dained him­self as "Fa­ther of the Na­tion," usurp­ing the ti­tle of Er­ic Williams.

His "over­vault­ing am­bi­tion," ego, hubris, as re­ferred to by many com­men­ta­tors, got Man­ning in­to per­haps his most se­ri­ous trou­ble with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. It led him to ex­pend bil­lions, and with­out con­sul­ta­tion and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, on the host­ing of two in­ter­na­tion­al sum­mits. He de­ter­mined this was good for the coun­try and there­fore the de­ci­sion was made and im­ple­ment­ed with force and vengeance. But to achieve his am­bi­tions to stand amongst world lead­ers (in­ci­den­tal­ly dur­ing the cam­paign he could not help but crow about this dis­tinc­tion while dis­mis­sive­ly say­ing that his ma­jor op­po­nent could boast of no such dis­tinc­tion) he went on a spend­ing splurge: NA­PA, Hy­att, the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre the out-of-pro­por­tion man­sion that is the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence, in­clu­sive of a pri­vate con­cert, all in an at­tempt to "big-up" him­self amongst world lead­ers. In­deed, he had said that as host Prime Min­is­ter he need­ed a pri­vate jet to fly around to world cap­i­tals to make prepa­ra­tions for the sum­mit; he on­ly backed away from yet an­oth­er ex­trav­a­gance in the face of stout and de­ter­mined pub­lic an­tag­o­nism to such waste­ful ex­pen­di­ture. To achieve these am­bi­tions, Man­ning es­tab­lished a struc­ture (the spe­cial pur­pose state en­ter­prise) to hand to­tal pow­er to one man to en­sure that the build­ing in­fra­struc­ture to host the con­fer­ences was fin­ished on time to re­alise his am­bi­tions; for­get about the cost.

In the face of all odds, so great was his burn­ing am­bi­tion that he was pre­pared to "see no evil, hear no evil" in re­gard to Calder Hart. When hard ev­i­dence about al­leged col­lu­sion in the award of con­tracts to Sun­way sur­faced, Man­ning de­fend­ed Hart and urged every­one to re­ject the "jilt­ed lover" sto­ry of the for­mer hus­band of Sher­rine Hart. He be­lieved with­out ques­tion what was told to him, all be­cause he had the vi­sion of him­self on a world stage daz­zling be­fore him and would al­low noth­ing to get in the way of that all-con­sum­ing ego. What role re­li­gion in all of this? Mr Man­ning, whether feigned or gen­uine­ly con­vict­ed, used it for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es. He cul­ti­vat­ed the large and grow­ing evan­gel­i­cal move­ment, in­clud­ing state spon­sor­ship of the Di­vine Echoes. He even let it drop that his next mis­sion in life would be a pas­tor.

Un­like in 1995 when he could lay blame against a few of his as­so­ciates for leak­ing the date of the ear­ly elec­tion to the op­po­si­tion and so al­leged­ly caus­ing the PNM to lose, Mr Man­ning kept this one to him­self to re­tain what he said was the el­e­ment of sur­prise over his op­po­nents. But there are those who say that maybe there was spir­i­tu­al in­spi­ra­tion, even guid­ance in this mat­ter: "I am sor­ry for him, but he is to blame, he used to boast about this dame, he used to say that she is di­vine, but for Patrick, broth­er well he take a six for ah nine" (The Hawk–1960s). These mat­ters must now be in­struc­tive to the new regime so we will con­tin­ue.