Yvonne Webb

One year af­ter the de­feat of the PNM at the polls and his re­moval as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, (PNM), for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is en­joy­ing a resur­gence in pop­u­lar­i­ty, all due to his sus­pen­sion from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day.Con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do East, which Man­ning has rep­re­sent­ed for 40 years, ral­lied around their sus­pend­ed MP yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing the ac­tion as harsh and op­pres­sive.ost of the con­stituents said the ac­tion by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment on­ly helped to strength­en Man­ning's role and func­tion.Bar­ry Gar­cia, who was part of Man­ning's se­cu­ri­ty de­tail dur­ing his tenure as Prime Min­is­ter, said:"This Gov­ern­ment has played right in­to Mr Man­ning's hand. Is best they had asked him to apol­o­gise... make him eat hum­ble pie.

"They don't have the po­lit­i­cal acu­men to deal with a 40-year po­lit­i­cal vet­er­an be­cause what they have done is to strength­en him."Pas­tor Nel­ton Richard­son, who has a long re­la­tion­ship with Man­ning, de­scribed him as a won­der­ful per­son.He added: "It is re­gret­table for a man like Patrick Man­ning to face this sit­u­a­tion. Any­where you pass in this coun­try you can see his im­pres­sion."If there is for­give­ness for wrongs com­mit­ted, Patrick Man­ning is a man wor­thy of for­give­ness. He is a fight­er. A fight­er goes down and then he comes back up."Roger Christo­pher, who was clean­ing a gate at a busi­ness place in Co­coyea Vil­lage, said: "We could nev­er get a prime min­is­ter like that again."That sus­pen­sion is too harsh. As big peo­ple, they could have worked it out and not let it come to this but they on­ly kicks­ing in Par­lia­ment."

A group of young men, "hang­ing out" at the Pleas­antville Plaza, told the T&T Guardian it was wrong to sus­pend Man­ning af­ter the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee found him guilty of con­tempt of Par­lia­ment."They should have wait­ed un­til he came back and then re­solved that," said Dami­ael Saun­ders, re­fer­ring to Man­ning's trip to Cu­ba where he has gone to seek med­ical at­ten­tion."I strong­ly dis­agree with the de­ci­sion. The Hous­ing Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, has a vendet­ta against Mr Man­ning, ever since he (Mooni­lal) con­test­ed the San Fer­nan­do East seat and got a bad lick­ing," he added.An­oth­er young man, who did not want to give his name, agreed with Saun­ders, adding: "They want to de­stroy him."Yet an­oth­er ar­gued: "You have to know how to beat a man. Mak­ing him apol­o­gise would have weak­ened him but sus­pend­ing him has on­ly made him stronger."

Jack Charles, on his way to the fu­ner­al of Sean "Smi­ley" Jack­son, who was al­leged­ly killed by a rel­a­tive last week, said: "I feel sat­is­fied with Mr Man­ning's rep­re­sen­ta­tion, not 100 per cent, but 99 per cent. "I don't al­ways agree with the things he has done but over­all he has been a good rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the past 40 years and I feel they should not have sus­pend­ed him. That's harsh."For­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, Ver­non Ab­erdeen, ra­tio­nalised: "They could have let him go with a slap on the wrist be­cause I see Mr Man­ning on his way out."Some oth­er con­stituents, buy­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles from a ven­dor, said the sus­pen­sion was of no ef­fect to them.

"Whether he sus­pend­ed or not, I still have to work hard in this coun­try. Those politi­cians not do­ing any­thing for me or my fam­i­ly," said one of them. Oth­ers, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied said they could not un­der­stand why Man­ning's sup­port­ers were ob­ject­ing to his sus­pen­sion.One said: "They should have en­cour­aged him to ap­pear be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee and state his case. If he had done this, maybe the out­come would have been dif­fer­ent."He has been silent for the past year. Why are they now com­plain­ing that he has been si­lenced by the sus­pen­sion. The PNM is not above the law."They sus­pend­ed Pan­day (for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day) for a year and there was not this great out­cry. What's the big deal?"