Michelle Loubon

Pe­ter Tay­lor is Flirt­ing With Des­tiny. She's not a woman–but, a book penned by the for­mer min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs/Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Princes Town South/Table­land.

Stu­dio 66 artist Makem­ba Kun­le il­lus­trates the theme with a paint­ing of a man car­ry­ing a torch.

It con­tains a col­lec­tion of es­says and speech­es Tay­lor wrote on con­tem­po­rary is­sues rang­ing from pol­i­tics and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs, sports, cul­ture and lo­cal af­fairs. Bel­mont-born Tay­lor is a prac­tis­ing at­tor­ney and for­mer Guardian colum­nist. On Fri­day morn­ing, at Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain Tay­lor said: "There's even a piece on The Hy­att Re­gency: Trinidad's Ode To Ex­cel­lence. I praised Patrick Man­ning (for­mer PM)."He put his thoughts to pa­per in an un­pub­lished ar­ti­cle on April 9, 2008.

He said: "Hy­att will be but one of the many ed­i­fices of ex­cel­lence to be con­struct­ed. Fri­day's spec­ta­cle bore tes­ti­mo­ny to the in­escapable fact that T&T de­spite its chal­lenges, is mov­ing in­ex­orably ahead in the har­ness­ing of its hu­man and in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal."

Man­ning a vic­tim of Dr pol­i­tics

Tay­lor's view on Man­ning took a dif­fer­ent swing dur­ing the count­down to the May 24 elec­tion. He put some of it down to "mes­sian­ic con­scious­ness" in an in­ter­view with Guardian As­so­ciate Ed­i­tor Essi­ba Small. He ex­pand­ed up­on the fi­as­co sur­round­ing his al­leged with­draw­al in 'Re­flec­tions on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gen­er­al Elec­tions 2010'.

He said: "He told me he was trou­bled by the news­pa­per re­ports emerg­ing from my en­counter with the res­i­dents the day be­fore. I re­it­er­at­ed they were a gross ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the facts, they were sen­sa­tion­alised, this was a cut and paste of events and I was nei­ther booed, jeered nor asked to leave by any­one. We both stood and shook hands and I knew that the de­ci­sion had al­ready been made.

"The fol­low­ing morn­ing at about 9 am, I re­ceived a phone call from Man­ning ask­ing me to with­draw my can­di­da­cy. I calm­ly agreed.

"He of­fered delu­sion­ary as­sur­ances. A can­di­date who was born and bred in Moru­ga would be sure vic­tor at the polls for the PNM." Need­less to say, Au­gus­tus Thomas, an at­tor­ney, was de­feat­ed by Clifton de Couteau whom Tay­lor had de­feat­ed in 2007.

Tay­lor said Man­ning's de­ci­sion to call the elec­tion was en­tire­ly his and his alone. Tay­lor main­tained last week: "In­fal­li­bil­i­ty is the pre­rog­a­tive of God."The era of the max­i­mum leader is over. I think Mr Man­ning was a vic­tim of Dr Pol­i­tics." Quizzed on whether he would re­turn to pol­i­tics, he said: "Pol­i­tics is a call­ing. I have not ruled it out."

About Tay­lor

Tay­lor cred­its his par­ents Mil­ton and Gladys Tay­lor for in­spir­ing him to be suc­cess­ful. An ex­cerpt said: His (Tay­lor Sr) fa­ther, a very poor man had eight chil­dren. Since he was un­able to buy shoes for all eight to at­tend school, he sent none to school. With­out blow­ing his trum­pet, Tay­lor was de­ter­mined to make his fa­ther proud.

"I have al­ways been aware of my fa­ther's sto­ry...of his un­ful­filled am­bi­tions buried deep with­in my sub­con­scious­ness. Were he for­tu­nate to have had the ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties of my gen­er­a­tion he would have ex­celled, such would have been his bril­liance." His Flir­ta­tion with Des­tiny archives it...

"I have al­ways had a pas­sion for read­ing and for books. I have al­ways loved read­ing. I com­piled these es­says in 2003. I gave a speech in Gene­va on In­tel­lec­tu­al Ter­ri­to­ry. I gave a speech on Food Prices in the Sen­ate."

The book fea­tures black and white pho­tographs of Tay­lor's par­ents, men­tor Prof Ja­cob, dear friend Umil­ta Saun­ders, sis­ter Mar­i­an and beau­ti­ful daugh­ter Imani.