Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Bri­an Man­ning, the son of the late prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, has moved one step clos­er to be­ing the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) stan­dard-bear­er in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion for the con­stituen­cy his fa­ther held for 44 con­sec­u­tive years.

The younger Man­ning emerged as the choice of the ex­ec­u­tive of the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy on Fri­day and will face the screen­ing com­mit­tee led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day.

Man­ning was able to se­cure 14 of the 24 votes while the oth­er 10 went to the in­cum­bent Ran­dall Mitchell. PNM sources in San Fer­nan­do East, how­ev­er, say there is a great deal of con­fu­sion over the vot­ing, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions of fraud.

It is un­der­stood Mitchell’s camp be­lieves the bal­lot box was tam­pered with and is like­ly to take a pe­ti­tion to the screen­ing com­mit­tee to­day, in which they will gath­er a ma­jor­i­ty of sig­na­tures of the San Fer­nan­do con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive to show it was Mitchell who got the ma­jor­i­ty of votes and not Man­ning.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, both Mitchell and Man­ning said they were not in a po­si­tion to com­ment but both ac­knowl­edged the out­come.

Mitchell, who is the Tourism Min­is­ter and an at­tor­ney, be­came the San Fer­nan­do East MP af­ter he won his seat in the last Gen­er­al Elec­tion. He had re­placed Man­ning’s fa­ther af­ter the late prime min­is­ter opt­ed to bow out of pol­i­tics fol­low­ing ill health. He sub­se­quent­ly died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Ju­ly 2, 2016.

Un­der the PNM’s screen­ing process, a min­i­mum of one par­ty group has to nom­i­nate a can­di­date. They are then screened by the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and the ex­ec­u­tive votes for the can­di­date of choice. If the vote is not unan­i­mous, then all who re­ceived votes are free to go be­fore the par­ty’s na­tion­al screen­ing com­mit­tee.

It is ex­pect­ed that both Man­ning and Mitchell will face the com­mit­tee to­day but Mitchell is fac­ing an up­hill bat­tle hav­ing not been able to com­mand the sup­port of the ex­ec­u­tive five years af­ter be­ing their stan­dard-bear­er.

Mitchell al­so faces an op­po­nent whose fam­i­ly name is syn­ony­mous with pol­i­tics in San Fer­nan­do West and whose fa­ther nev­er lost an elec­tion, even when the PNM was trounced in the 1986 and 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Man­ning has a BA in Eco­nom­ics and a BSC In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Col­lege Park. He al­so holds an MSC in Fi­nance and As­set Man­age­ment, al­so from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land and an MBA in In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and Mar­ket­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi.

Sources in San Fer­nan­do East say he has the full back­ing of his moth­er Hazel, who is ex­pect­ed to cam­paign for him if he gets the nod from the na­tion­al screen­ing com­mit­tee to­day.

His late fa­ther Patrick Man­ning joined the PNM as a youth and went on to be­come its third leader in 1986, re­build­ing the PNM af­ter the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion’s crush­ing 1986 vic­to­ry. A ge­ol­o­gist, he was T&T’s fourth and sixth prime min­is­ter over 1991/95 and 2001/2010. The longest-serv­ing MP, Man­ning rep­re­sent­ed the PNM in San Fer­nan­do East for 44 years, re­tir­ing from pol­i­tics in Jan­u­ary 2015 al­though he’d ini­tial­ly in­di­cat­ed in­ter­est to con­test the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Among health is­sues, Man­ning suf­fered from rheumat­ic fever at age 14, un­der­went heart valve surgery in 1998, had a pace­mak­er in­stalled in 2004 and al­so had cor­rec­tive eye surgery that year. In 2008, he un­der­went surgery in Cu­ba to re­move a ma­lig­nant kid­ney tu­mour and al­so had the kid­ney re­moved.