Gail Alexan­der

There will nev­er be an­oth­er Patrick Man­ning and no-one can take his place or do what he did, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day.

"To­day we mourn the pass­ing, not on­ly of a man but the end of an era in T&T's po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry. In­deed, he was the em­bod­i­ment of the term 'states­man,' some­one who comes along once every few decades to make an in­deli­ble mark on so­ci­ety and the world at large. We've lost a men­tor and a hero of the PNM," Im­bert added, pay­ing glow­ing trib­ute to Man­ning in Par­lia­ment .

Im­bert is act­ing for Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley who is at­tend­ing the 36th Cari­com sum­mit in Guyana.

Mark­ing Man­ning's death last Sat­ur­day, PNM MPs yes­ter­day donned the bal­isi­er tie. Fe­male MPs wore bal­isi­er pins.

Un­der Man­ning's tenure PNM MPs al­ways wore bal­isi­er ties but Row­ley had changed the tra­di­tion to ties of the na­tion­al colours. Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans ob­served a minute's si­lence on Man­ning's pass­ing. De­scrib­ing Man­ning as one of T&T's finest sons, Im­bert said,Man­ning was unique.

"His record of 44 un­bro­ken years of par­lia­men­tary ser­vice is like­ly to re­main un­touched for a long time. He was a states­man, a vi­sion­ary and per­haps the best demon­stra­tion of a ca­reer pub­lic ser­vant. "He has been de­scribed by many as the quin­tes­sen­tial states­man, al­ways el­e­gant­ly clad, smil­ing with the pub­lic and very af­fa­ble in in­ter­ac­tions with oth­ers.

"Those brave enough to meet him on the domi­no ta­ble though, knew the dan­ger that lurked be­hind his smile, for he was cal­cu­lat­ing, strate­gic and sim­ply bril­liant at the game. His pas­sion for it, matched on­ly by his pas­sion for clas­si­cal mu­sic."

Out­lin­ing some of Man­ning's many pi­o­neer­ing achieve­ments, Im­bert said: "Such was the breadth of his vi­sion and this is why he was al­ways deeply hurt by the crit­ics of his vi­sion. "I am equal­ly cer­tain it must have been a source of con­cern for him to re­turn to his beloved San Fer­nan­do to see the dis­as­sem­bling of his vi­sion for the Chancery Lane Com­plex.

"Many of his ini­tia­tives were not ob­vi­ous in his time. Mr Man­ning's fore­sight, metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to de­tail and abil­i­ty to see far­ther than most, marks him as a leader way ahead of his time." Im­bert re­called Man­ning's pen­chant for work­ing from 5 am or 6 am.

He said:"His ap­petite for new ideas and con­cepts that would trans­form T&T was al­most in­sa­tiable. He was a prodi­gious taskmas­ter but al­ways full of ad­vice.

"He would al­ways ad­vise us to be open, at­ten­tive and firm but above all, po­lite. It was this re­spect for the oth­er which saw him treat the peo­ple of the Caribbean a par­tic­u­lar way.

He was the epit­o­me of the Caribbean man." Im­bert cred­it­ed Man­ning's de­ter­mi­na­tion with "res­cu­ing" the PNM af­ter the sound thrash­ing in 1991. It was his will­ing­ness to sub­ject him­self to crit­i­cism that al­lowed PNM to claw its way back to pow­er in 2001."

"He made great de­mands, first of him­self, then of oth­ers. He re­fused to ac­cept fail­ures and re­mained un­daunt­ed by the prospect that some­thing hadn't been done be­fore. When he spoke, he did so with au­thor­i­ty.....he knew every de­tail of projects and of­ten took charge of the over­all pic­ture."

Im­bert thanked Hazel Man­ning and sons–David and Bri­an–for shar­ing Man­ning "with us for the past 44 years."

Im­bert called for "prayers of uni­ty and spir­i­tu­al up­lift­ing. We must let him know he was ad­mired and loved in the east, in the west, in the north, in the South and in To­ba­go."