Richard Lord

Sus­pend­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do East and for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning says he has been giv­en a clean bill of health by Cuban doc­tors and is pre­pared "to take on" the Gov­ern­ment. "We are not tak­ing that," he said to sup­port­ers from his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy who as­sem­bled at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to wel­come him home yes­ter­day. He said over the past 12 months in of­fice "the Gov­ern­ment has vi­o­lat­ed a num­ber of laws and the Gov­ern­ment is in con­sid­er­able trou­ble, con­sid­er­able." Man­ning's flight land­ed short­ly be­fore 4 pm yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and min­utes lat­er he was greet­ed to chants of "we want you back, we want you back, we have your back, we have your back."

Among those in the crowd to wel­come Man­ning and his wife, Hazel, home, were for­mer Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gary Hunt, for­mer Sci­ence Min­is­ter Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and for­mer So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and con­stituen­cy chair­man Tina Gron­lund-Nunez. Man­ning said he went to Cu­ba this week for a rou­tine med­ical check-up which he had not done for the past two years. In an ad­dress to an en­thu­si­as­tic crowd Man­ning said the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which sus­pend­ed him for the rest of the cur­rent ses­sion, "act­ed as a kan­ga­roo court." He said that was a con­se­quence of the Par­lia­ment dom­i­nat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment with 29 MPs in a 41-seat cham­ber.

"You could see from what has hap­pened that there was no jus­tice. They took ad­van­tage of the fact that they have a ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment to take ne­far­i­ous acts, " he added. Man­ning pre­dict­ed the Gov­ern­ment would re­alise in due course that his sus­pen­sion was one of the "ma­jor mis­takes" it had made in its first year in of­fice. He thanked Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion MPs Colm Im­bert and Don­na Cox for speak­ing in sup­port of him dur­ing the de­bate on the re­port of the com­mit­tee, which end­ed with his sus­pen­sion. Man­ning said he would con­sult with Row­ley and oth­ers, in­clud­ing his con­stituents, on his next move against his sus­pen­sion. "And on Mon­day evening I am go­ing to an­nounce our next course of ac­tion," Man­ning told the cheer­ing crowd.

He said on that day the con­stituen­cy would hold a spe­cial 40th an­niver­sary meet­ing where a spe­cial guest was sched­uled to speak. Man­ning said the bat­tle had just start­ed. He said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment act­ed high-hand­ed­ly in sus­pend­ing him. Man­ning said he was left out­side the meet­ing room for 15 min­utes when the first meet­ing of the com­mit­tee was called. He added: "From the start the Speak­er (Wade Mark) was act­ing as King Wade and I was be­ing treat­ed as though I was an ac­cused felon and there­fore I had to take what­ev­er they hand­ed out." Man­ning said he was not sent to Par­lia­ment for that. He said the mis­take he had re­peat­ed­ly made was that he was "too man­nish."

Man­ning said of the 11 meet­ings called by the com­mit­tee he was in­vit­ed to sev­en. He said he at­tend­ed four of those meet­ing and missed three with good rea­son. He said the com­mit­tee failed to call Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ap­pear be­fore it. Man­ning said the com­mit­tee ac­cept­ed the PM's state­ment in Par­lia­ment with­out any doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence to sup­port it. He said he was sus­pend­ed be­cause his es­ti­mat­ed cost of the PM pri­vate res­i­dence in south Trinidad var­ied sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the fig­ure stat­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar. "Is that jus­tice my friends? And we're not tak­ing that. We can't. We're not tak­ing that," he said. He said the show of sup­port had giv­en him the im­pe­tus to con­tin­ue his bat­tle.

Lat­er he told re­porters it had not changed his ear­li­er de­ci­sion not to re­turn to ac­tive pol­i­tics when his cur­rent term end­ed. Re­spond­ing to the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um's con­tro­ver­sial $40 mil­lion truck­ing con­tract in which a probe has been launched, Man­ning said: "It was not by any means an iso­lat­ed event." Last week, CDS, one of the bid­ders in the con­tract, had sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, seek­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, fol­low­ing con­cerns an­oth­er bid­der, Ralph Gopaul's firm - Gopaul and Com­pa­ny Ltd (GCL) - may be the pre­ferred bid­der. Re­fer­ring to the con­tro­ver­sy, Man­ning said the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion had been act­ing in that man­ner from the start be­cause it had won the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion.