Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

I toyed with the idea of "Wreck-it Ralph" for a head­line, as it's the Right Hon Ralph Gon­salves, PM of some­where or oth­er, that got this col­umn out of me. I say "PM of some­where or oth­er" since The Rt Hon Ralph is here so of­ten, his job of run­ning his own coun­try re­al­ly couldn't be that im­por­tant.

But about the late PM Patrick Man­ning: or­di­nar­i­ly, it be­hooves one to let the fam­i­ly have the com­fort of praise, de­served or not, in the wake of the loved one's pass­ing. But Mr Man­ning is, ex of­fi­cio, oblig­ed to for­go that right with the twad­dle be­ing spout­ed, which has him called a great man, with ho­n­our and dig­ni­ty and a vi­sion­ary and what­not.

The facts lead to a con­clu­sion so dif­fer­ent that there seems to be a con­cert­ed ef­fort to or­ches­trate what's known else­where as "forced for­get­ting." So let's take a quick run over the lat­er ca­reer of Mr Man­ning, start­ing from the 1995 elec­tion dead­lock and loss. (Sel­wyn Ryan's books, The Jand­hi and the Cross (1999) and Dead­lock (2003), and Ralph Pre­m­das's edit­ed col­lec­tion, Iden­ti­ty, Eth­nic­i­ty and Cul­ture in the Caribbean (2003) pro­vide de­tails.)

Post-1996, the PNM and its cul­tur­al and me­dia arms be­gan their cam­paign of eth­nic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal reprisal for the loss that led us di­rect­ly to the so­cial night­mare we're in to­day. Ca­lyp­so tents be­gan the down­ward de­scent in­to pu­trid­i­ty, and when they were aban­doned by pay­ing au­di­ences, the bile found an out­let in talk ra­dio. Many peo­ple for­get, and many work hard to make them for­get, just how vile the rhetoric on i95.5 and Pow­er 102 was in the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s. The head of TATT in 2005 likened the sit­u­a­tion to Bu­run­di and Rwan­da.

Mr Man­ning was at the cen­tre of this, since the pur­pose was to put him back in pow­er. He could have stopped the vile­ness by speak­ing out but did not. In fact, the mael­strom grew, and I'd be re­miss if I didn't men­tion Max­ie Cuffie, now Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, who was in­te­gral to it. When Min­is­ter Cuffie was ed­i­tor of this news­pa­per in 1996, its con­tent caused con­flict be­tween it­self and the then Prime Min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day. This con­tin­ued as Min­is­ter Cuffie moved to the In­de­pen­dent and fi­nal­ly CCN Group, where he spent the last years of the UNC term. In 2002, when the PNM re­sumed gov­ern­ment, he went to work for them.

Among oth­er things Min­is­ter Cuffie, as ed­i­tor of the Sun­day Ex­press, pub­lished PNM ac­tivists who wrote things like In­di­an doc­tors were ster­il­is­ing black women in pub­lic hos­pi­tals. (Said sen­ti­ments were lat­er im­mor­talised in Singing San­dra's ca­lyp­so, Geno­cide.) He al­so pub­lished ra­bid In­di­an colum­nists Anil Ma­habir, Ka­mal Per­sad of the In­di­an Re­view Com­mit­tee, and some oth­ers, for "bal­ance." And he, and the PNM me­dia arm en bloc, ran with the "vot­er padding" sto­ry in the run-up to the 2000 elec­tion, which led to crim­i­nal charges be­ing laid. And dis­missed be­cause there was no ev­i­dence.

Jump to 2001. De­spite it all, the UNC won the 2000 elec­tion. En­ter Trevor "Ton­to" Su­dama, Ralph Ma­haraj, and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who hand­ed over pow­er to the Mr Man­ning's PNM, and pre­cip­i­tat­ed an­oth­er elec­tion which end­ed 18-18. This led, thanks to ANR Robin­son, to the PNM be­ing ap­point­ed to ex­ec­u­tive pow­er for a year with­out a Par­lia­ment, and pre­cip­i­tat­ed an elec­tion in 2002, which the PNM "won." The "vic­to­ry" was de­scribed by the leader of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen as be­ing at­trib­ut­able to his or­gan­i­sa­tion. Some of the tac­tics used in­clud­ed vot­er in­tim­i­da­tion in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, like Tu­na­puna. Of course, no record of this ex­ists.

It seems clear, from all this, that Mr Man­ning was pre­pared to use any means nec­es­sary to re­gain of­fice, in­clud­ing Faus­t­ian pacts. The con­se­quences of that will­ing­ness in­clude wide­spread racial con­flict, so­cial dis­in­te­gra­tion and es­ca­lat­ing crime to the present. Mur­ders were be­low 100 per an­num in 1999. Once the PNM got in, they shot up to over 400 in 2005.

In the growth of crime, Mr Man­ning was a cen­tral fig­ure. He made truces with crim­i­nal gangs at the Crowne Plaza meet­ings. Dur­ing the PNM's 2002-2010 regimes, the num­ber and re­sources of crim­i­nal gangs rose as they warred for state con­tracts. Then there was that lit­tle busi­ness of kid­nap­ping In­di­ans be­tween 2002 and 2008, which PNM ac­tivist Cro Cro im­mor­talised in song (Face Re­al­i­ty).

But there were many more spe­cif­ic atroc­i­ties in which Mr Man­ning par­tic­i­pat­ed di­rect­ly, like the im­peach­ment of the then Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma in 2007. Shar­ma was cleared, and once the smoke cleared af­ter the hear­ings, it be­came ev­i­dent that this whole af­fair, let's say for brevi­ty, stank. The Chief Mag­is­trate was com­pro­mised, and the then AG re­fused to tes­ti­fy. (See The Mustill Re­port, 2007.) Was it a racial con­spir­a­cy? Ask the Privy Coun­cil who ruled the Ma­ha Sab­ha's de­nial of a ra­dio li­cense by Cab­i­net, and its grant­i­ng of one to PNM sup­port­er, Louis Lee Sing, amount­ed to dis­crim­i­na­tion. Anand Ram­lo­gan al­so made his name and for­tune tak­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion cas­es for civ­il ser­vants to court and win­ning dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

Then there was the mat­ter of Mr Man­ning ap­point­ing his wife to Cab­i­net which, in my naivety or ig­no­rance, I be­lieve to be il­le­gal. (The in­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act Ch 22.01, Part IV, Ar­ti­cle 24 states a per­son in pub­lic of­fice shall not "use his of­fice for the im­prop­er ad­vance­ment of his own or his fam­i­ly's per­son­al or fi­nan­cial in­ter­ests or the in­ter­est of any per­son." This could ap­ply to giv­ing a job to his wife, or a house to his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er (aka the Prophet­ess).

Out­side of these po­lit­i­cal and fa­mil­ial in­trigues, it ap­pears Mr Man­ning's re­la­tion­ship with Mr Calder Hart, and his ad­min­is­tra­tion's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Cli­co col­lapse, the GTL project, and var­i­ous oth­er de­ba­cles are all but for­got­ten. So while Mr Man­ning might have been a harm­less, even lik­able man in pri­vate life, he was a dis­as­ter as Prime Min­is­ter. He broke the law, broke the bound­aries of de­cen­cy and broke the so­ci­ety. And the Rt Hon Ralph Gon­salves needs to stay home and mind his own coun­try's busi­ness more, and be in T&T busi­ness less.