Every time Par­lia­ment meets, I wait to see if the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do East and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, would say any­thing. It is now four months since the coun­try changed gov­ern­ment and re­gard­less of the num­ber of ac­cu­sa­tions made against his ad­min­is­tra­tion, while in of­fice, Mr Man­ning is yet to of­fer a de­fense or con­tribute to a de­bate in some way whether se­ri­ous or oth­er­wise. Hansard would prob­a­bly show that his spo­ken words, so far, in the present sit­ting of par­lia­ment, is when he took his oath of of­fice as a mem­ber of par­lia­ment; and his "yes" vote in sup­port of the 2010–2011 bud­get.

Mr Man­ning who was al­ways quick to let all know that he is the longest serv­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and the im­por­tance of the House, one would have thought, would be ea­ger to show his de­bat­ing skills, but sad­ly not so; and has now be­come the most silent mem­ber.

Sit­ting at num­ber twelve on the op­po­si­tion bench and mak­ing no mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion, re­gard­less of col­lect­ing a MP's salary paid for by tax­pay­ers, sig­nals to the con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do East and by ex­ten­sion the coun­try that it had to be "all or noth­ing".

C Pe­ters

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