Gail Alexan­der

There is a Man­ning Vil­lage in St Vin­cent and the peo­ple there, like their Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves, are to­day mourn­ing the death of for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

"Shock, grief, de­pres­sion–I can­not be­lieve, I just can­not be­lieve he's gone," Gon­salves said yes­ter­day, on the verge of tears.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view from his St Vin­cent home, Gon­salves told the T&T Guardian, "I left him just on Tues­day. When I saw him in the hos­pi­tal in Trinidad the doc­tors were do­ing their tests. I held his hand and looked him in the eye and I said, 'My broth­er Patrick, I have al­ways loved you and I am with you'.

"And he looked back at me al­so, our eyes met and we knew what we meant to each oth­er... "

Gon­salves is strug­gling to come to terms with the fact that when he last saw Man­ning in hos­pi­tal on Tues­day, it was in­deed the last.

"Dur­ing the vis­it, I told him of a new flight com­ing to St Vin­cent soon. I know he didn't like the small planes, so I told him in a big­ger one, he and Hazel must come up as our spe­cial guests and he said he would like that...The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away..."

Gon­salves, who is prepar­ing for to­mor­row's Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in Guyana, con­firmed that the meet­ing will be ded­i­cat­ed to Man­ning and nu­mer­ous trib­utes are ex­pect­ed to be paid by re­gion­al col­leagues.

"He was a vi­sion­ary leader. No po­lit­i­cal leader in T&T af­ter In­de­pen­dence has been a greater re­gion­al in­te­gra­tionist than Patrick Man­ning," he said.

Gon­salves, who had been friends with Man­ning for 49 years, ex­plained why some in his own is­land may be mourn­ing Man­ning to­day.

"There was this lit­tle vil­lage in By­era on the coast that was dev­as­tat­ed in 2004 by Hur­ri­cane Ivan. To ac­com­mo­date the res­i­dents, which in­clud­ed a blind gen­tle­man from T&T, we end­ed up buy­ing oth­er lands to house them. Do you know your Prime Min­is­ter gave us mon­ey for the vil­lage? He'd giv­en Grena­da $10 mil­lion to as­sist with their dam­age and gave St Vin­cent $4 mil­lion and he gave us fur­ther help sub­se­quent­ly as well.

"When I hand­ed out the keys for the homes to the res­i­dents, I told them this (was made pos­si­ble) be­cause of a man in T&T named Patrick Man­ning and they all shout­ed, 'This is Man­ning Vil­lage!' There is a sign and every­thing to show this.

"When his col­leagues from the gov­ern­ment vis­it­ed me once–Jer­ry Narace and Bar­ry Sinanan–I showed them and they said, 'You re­al­ly love this man!' That must be the on­ly place in the Caribbean named af­ter him. He was very gen­er­ous to us.

"He was al­ways the first out of the box to help. That was the kind of spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty and friend­ship he had. If I had to sum it up, Patrick would be ex­cel­lence in spir­it. That was his hall­mark. He was an out­stand­ing leader.

Gon­salves be­came even more nos­tal­gic in re­count­ing their decades-long close friend­ship.

"Our paths first crossed in 1967 at uni­ver­si­ty. He played for a pan­side and a Tri­ni man who man­aged that band asked me to play with them al­so. Patrick used to play in the en­gine room, be­lieve it or not, then lat­er he played tenor pan.

"When he was Prime Min­is­ter, we spoke to each oth­er every sin­gle day. Be­fore 5.30 am or by 6.15 am, we'd talk. I'd call or he'd call. In 2010, when he called the gen­er­al elec­tion date he called me the next morn­ing and I re­mon­strat­ed with him. I asked him if every­thing was in place. He knew I would have been vexed with him for do­ing it ear­ly, so he didn't tell me be­fore.

"He used to get re­al­ly hurt–but he nev­er talked about it–when peo­ple ac­cused him of cor­rup­tion and sim­i­lar things and he was nev­er any of that as was shown up af­ter. No­body could find any­thing and even peo­ple close to him made up things. He used to feel hurt, I know.

"I once asked him why he was al­low­ing him­self to take a beat­ing for a man in his cen­tral ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said to me, he didn't see ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion or any­thing crim­i­nal, but if the man had done any­thing wrong, he would do the time for it."

Gon­salves con­tin­ued: "He was re­al­ly strong about the sit­u­a­tion but things peo­ple said hurt him and al­so some­times when peo­ple in his own or­gan­i­sa­tion said things about him, but he'd say, 'Ralph, I leave all man­ner of men and women to God'. But I know it used to hurt him.

"He nev­er had mal­ice. He tried his best to deal with every­thing. Patrick gen­uine­ly loved peo­ple, all races, po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions and re­li­gions."

Gon­salves re­called how Man­ning looked up to late PNM founder Dr Er­ic Williams.

"That was his po­lit­i­cal guid­ing light and men­tor," he said as he re­lat­ed how Man­ning fol­lowed Williams' do­ings since age 14.

"Un­der him, T&T ad­vanced on the work Williams and oth­ers had left. Patrick gave his all for T&T. He want­ed to give the coun­try every­thing. He want­ed the best for you all, you know. He al­ways used to tell me, 'Ralph, you must make sure the peo­ple have lights and wa­ter. Make sure the chil­dren go to school. He said every­thing was for all the peo­ple, so I fol­lowed his in­struc­tions."

Gon­salves added: "I know he was a won­der­ful hus­band and fa­ther. On be­half of our Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of St Vin­cent, my­self, my wife, Eloise, who was close to Hazel, I ex­press my heart­felt con­do­lences."