Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Bri­an Man­ning, son of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, has lashed out at politi­cians, say­ing they are "seek­ing to score points" by vis­it­ing his ail­ing fa­ther. Man­ning, ad­dress­ing San Fer­nan­do East con­stituents gath­ered last night at his fa­ther's of­fice on Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do, said: "It is not about scor­ing points of the demise or the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers." On Tues­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, one of the San Fer­nan­do East MP's arch ri­vals, vis­it­ed the el­der Man­ning at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He was among sev­er­al po­lit­i­cans who vis­it­ed the for­mer ail­ing prime min­is­ter af­ter he suf­fered a stroke on Mon­day night.

The younger Man­ning crit­i­cised po­lit­i­cans who he said "ma­ligned" his fa­ther dur­ing his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer yet come to see his "demise" to run to the me­dia to make state­ments. "Some po­lit­i­cans play­ing games," he said. Man­ning was ac­com­pa­nied by for­mer min­is­ter of Com­m­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Joan Yuille-Williams and San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy pro­to­col of­fi­cer, Wendy Lewis. He said Lewis was the on­ly au­tho­rised per­son to speak on the fam­i­ly's be­half. Man­ning said the fam­i­ly would is­sue dai­ly up­dates at three in­ter­vals on his fa­ther's con­di­tion.

While he knocked some po­lit­i­cans, Man­ning was in high praise of Health Min­is­ter Dr Faud Khan who vis­it­ed the el­der Man­ning at the High De­pen­den­cy Ward. "I would like to pub­licly thank him for every­thing he has done to make my fa­ther's stay there as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble and the fam­i­ly's stay as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble," he said. "Dr Faud Khan, you are do­ing an ex­cel­lent job." Man­ning as­sured con­stituents that his fa­ther was do­ing "ex­treme­ly well," as he had re­gained some mo­bil­i­ty on his right side and start­ed speak­ing some words.

The younger Man­ning de­fend­ed his fa­ther's de­ci­sion in the past to seek med­ical care out­side of T&T. He as­sured it had noth­ing to do with his con­fi­dence in the lo­cal health­care sys­tem, but there were some who would "turn it in­to a cir­cus... you see what I mean," he said, point­ing to me­dia. Man­ning ex­pressed dis­plea­sure with the me­dia hype around his fa­ther's hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and "mis­in­for­ma­tion" be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed in some quar­ters. "It be­comes ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing and I think we can all un­der­stand that every­one has a right to pri­va­cy, even our pub­lic fig­ures and not just pri­va­cy, a right to some peace and qui­et," he said. "I un­der­stand that peo­ple mean well...Some peo­ple do not mean well, they just want to score some points."