Suzanne Shep­pard

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­za­lves ar­rives in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day to vis­it his close friend, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who is hos­pi­talised af­ter suf­fer­ing a stroke on Mon­day night. Prime Min­is­ter Gon­za­lves told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view late yes­ter­day he would ar­rive on a 9.20 am flight and would im­me­di­ate­ly go to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. "All I want him to do is see my eyes and I see his," said Gon­za­lves, who has been close friends of Man­ning since their days as stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Mona, Ja­maica.

The St Vin­cent leader said he and Man­ning nev­er al­lowed chang­ing po­lit­i­cal for­tunes to get in the way of their friend­ship. He added: "We keep in touch all the time. He is my re­al broth­er. We go way back. I want him to come up and spend some time with me."

Gon­za­lves said he would be in Trinidad un­til to­mor­row be­cause he want­ed to give some moral sup­port to Man­ning's wife, Hazel, and his sons. "Patrick Man­ning is a good and loy­al ser­vant of the peo­ple. He has made an im­mense con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go and to the re­gion," he added. Mean­while, Man­ning con­tin­ues to de­fy the odds, sit­ting up, eat­ing solids and speak­ing, just three days af­ter suf­fer­ing the stroke. He has asked to go home and has been dis­cussing is­sues of na­tion­al in­ter­est, his wife told a news con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do East Con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Some 48 hours af­ter falling ill, Man­ning was re­moved from the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and placed in the High De­pen­den­cy Unit. Man­ning's sis­ter, Dr Petronel­la Man­ning-Al­leyne, gave a com­pre­hen­sive in­sight in­to his med­ical his­to­ry and an inkling of what might have trig­gered the at­tack at his Sumadh Gar­dens home on Mon­day night.

"He sat up on his own, he spoke, he asked to go home. The doc­tors had to con­vince him he should not go home and he asked them to give him a sense of what was hap­pen­ing to him and his de­vel­op­ment," she said. Dr Man­ning-Al­leyne said the doc­tors were able to ex­plain to him he was pro­gress­ing very well and if he con­tin­ued along that line, "with­in three to six months he should be up and ready to walk, talk and do what he nor­mal­ly does." She al­so said he had been speak­ing out on the na­tion­al plan but she ad­vised him to get his per­son­al plan in place be­fore wor­ry­ing about na­tion­al is­sues. Paus­ing mo­men­tar­i­ly, dur­ing the brief­ing, some­what over­come emo­tion­al­ly, Mrs Man­ning said it was a dif­fi­cult time for the fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, she thanked all those who had been call­ing and ex­press­ing con­cern and sup­port, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­er gov­ern­ment lead­ers. Mrs Man­ning praised Dr Kan­ta Ram­cha­ran, who has been man­ag­ing her hus­band's care at the hos­pi­tal, and his team for their ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment. She said the doc­tors had been vis­it­ing him al­most every hour. She al­so praised a nurse, who, she said, stayed on the job for 16 hours to en­sure her hus­band was okay.