SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Patrick Man­ning and Dr Kei­th Row­ley, two Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment prime min­is­ters, were not cut from the same cloth. Their fun­da­men­tal be­liefs, lead­er­ship styles, ideas, poli­cies, gov­er­nance and in­ter­ac­tions with peo­ple were very dif­fer­ent.

They have been de­scribed as chalk and cheese by peo­ple who knew and in­ter­act­ed with them.

While Man­ning car­ried him­self like a states­man, Row­ley tend­ed to be tougher and more di­rect in han­dling the coun­try’s af­fairs.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to in­di­vid­u­als who in­ter­act­ed with both lead­ers to gauge their com­par­isons and sought the opin­ions of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts about their per­son­al­i­ties, per­for­mance and prime min­is­ter­ship.

“Man­ning was a vi­sion­ary. He did not ab­di­cate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. When he gave you some­thing to do, he gave you breath­ing space,” said for­mer PNM vice chair­man Robert Le Hunte, who sat on sev­er­al state boards dur­ing Man­ning’s tenure, de­scribed him as some­one with lead­er­ship qual­i­ties.

Hav­ing served as pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter in Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, Le Hunte said his lead­er­ship ap­proach was dif­fer­ent.

Row­ley did not fa­cil­i­tate many one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions, he said.

“And there­fore, the abil­i­ty to work di­rect­ly with him in get­ting di­rect guid­ance… it wasn’t there. He was not a per­son who would be call­ing up­on you to find out what’s go­ing on and to bounce ideas off. He was not a per­son to mi­cro­man­age.”

Le Hunte said Row­ley had im­mense con­fi­dence in Stu­art Young, whom he called his Gary Sobers and re­lied heav­i­ly on him.

“So a lot of how you dealt with Dr Row­ley, you al­most had very... at all points in time, you al­ways had to work through Stu­art Young.”

“If you’re a mem­ber of a team, no mat­ter how great you are, if you’re not get­ting play­time, you will nev­er be able to shine. Cab­i­net to me re­quires team­work. One per­son can­not car­ry a team on their back. When you are on­ly re­ly­ing on one per­son or a few peo­ple, then it leads to dis­tor­tion and it doesn’t lead to prop­er team­work,” he said.

For­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing said Man­ning was a far su­pe­ri­or leader to Row­ley. He viewed them on op­po­site ends of the scale.

“Man­ning cer­tain­ly il­lus­trat­ed he had a ca­pac­i­ty to think and to lead. Peo­ple will­ing­ly fol­lowed him. No­body was scared of him. Peo­ple dealt with Man­ning one-on-one.”

Most im­por­tant­ly, Lee Sing said, he al­ways had a lis­ten­ing ear, “took ad­vice from peo­ple and al­so gave ad­vice.”

Lee Sing, a found­ing mem­ber of the PNM, re­signed from the par­ty in 2015.

He said fol­low­ing Mon­day’s crush­ing elec­tion de­feat, the par­ty may have re­gret­ted se­lect­ing Row­ley as leader in 2010.

He ex­pect­ed par­ty sup­port­ers to chase Row­ley out of Bal­isi­er House when the gen­er­al coun­cil met on Wednes­day to se­lect Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son as Op­po­si­tion Leader.

In 2010, Man­ning was hound­ed out of Bal­isi­er House by an­gry sup­port­ers af­ter los­ing the elec­tion to the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship.

Man­ning served as prime min­is­ter from 1991 to 1995 and 2001 to 2010.

Lee Sing said dur­ing Row­ley’s ten years as prime min­is­ter, Lee Sing said his brash and un­apolo­getic style did not au­gur well for him and his par­ty.

Known for not minc­ing his words, Row­ley came un­der fire for telling women to choose their men wise­ly.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, he told the coun­try “From mid­night tonight, don’t jack­ass the thing.”

Lee Sing be­lieves such re­marks made Row­ley lose points.

“These things kill him. Those things il­lus­trat­ed to me his un­wor­thi­ness to hold the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter,” he said.

“Dr Row­ley had the pos­si­bil­i­ty to be a trans­for­ma­tion­al leader but lead­ing is not an easy as­sign­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you’re lead­ing and you have built up a team of peo­ple and sur­round­ed your­self by peo­ple who de­mand noth­ing of you.”

“The par­ty was bro­ken un­der him. His choice was a man who had no po­lit­i­cal savvy, a man who had no po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry,” he added, re­fer­ring to Stu­art Young, who was cho­sen as Row­ley’s suc­ces­sor.

“Where the PNM is at to­day is far worse than where Man­ning left it.”

Lee Sing said Row­ley “lived light and weighed heavy.”

For­mer PNM’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Nafeesa Mo­hammed said Man­ning was a true “states­man and diplo­mat” with bril­liant ideas, goals and ob­jec­tives for the coun­try.

One thing that stood out for her was Man­ning’s abil­i­ty to keep the Caribbean unit­ed.

“He helped to keep the peace in the re­gion when ten­sion was re­al­ly high,” she said.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed saw a change in Man­ning lead­ing up to the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

He con­vened few­er lead­er­ship meet­ings, “had his head in the clouds and did not want to be ques­tioned,” she re­called.

“He start­ed to be­come dis­con­nect­ed to the ground and from the par­ty.”

Around that time, doc­u­ments sur­faced al­leged­ly that an $820 mil­lion con­tact­ed had been award­ed to the wife of Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Calder Hart.

Man­ning al­so ad­mit­ted that State lands were grant­ed to con­struct a church in the Heights of Gua­napo, man­aged by Rev­erend Ju­liana Pe­na, his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er.

Mo­hammed said Row­ley, on the oth­er hand, was rough and did not have con­sis­tent meet­ings.

“Even though Man­ning be­came out of touch, he was still ap­proach­able. He was a gen­tle­man. He was very civ­il,” she said.

Mo­hammed was fired as Row­ley’s le­gal ad­vis­er in 2018 fol­low­ing a Face­book post where she took is­sue with the ar­rest of her rel­a­tive Tariq Mo­hammed.

She said there is a soft side to Row­ley that many peo­ple don’t know.

“I have seen that side in him,” she said.

For­mer PNM’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford said the PNM fol­lows tra­di­tion be­cause of the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion and Man­ning and Row­ley were re­spon­si­ble for re­build­ing the PNM af­ter it suf­fered de­feats.

“Both had the same task but in Man­ning’s case, it was very dif­fi­cult,” he said.

Ford said Man­ning was tasked with re­build­ing the PNM af­ter its 33-3 de­feat to the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion in 1986.

He point­ed out that Row­ley made his Cab­i­net di­verse “and they still ter­ror­is­ing us and say­ing that we are an African par­ty, which is non­sense.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Prof Hamid Ghany said Man­ning was able “to con­vey an im­age of dig­ni­fied diplo­ma­cy along­side an abil­i­ty to tack­le chal­lenges in the po­lit­i­cal gayelle with the req­ui­site force that was re­quired.”

On the oth­er hand, Row­ley did not ex­ude diplo­ma­cy “and was more com­fort­able func­tion­ing as if he were in the po­lit­i­cal gayelle most of the time.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said Row­ley had lim­it­ed suc­cess dur­ing his tenure com­pared to Man­ning and his neg­a­tives out­weighed his pos­i­tives.

“He bul­lied his way, not on­ly of his own par­ty but at­tempt­ed at many times to bul­ly the pop­u­la­tion in­to sim­ply ac­cept­ing things the way he saw it, with­out giv­ing peo­ple that op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he said, adding that Mon­day’s de­feat re­flect­ed that.

“He was not one who lis­tened to the peo­ple on the ground. He was sim­ply do­ing what he thought would have been in his best in­ter­est rather than in the best in­ter­est of the pop­u­la­tion,” Ra­goonath said

While Row­ley can be cred­it­ed for car­ing for the coun­try dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and sta­bil­is­ing the econ­o­my, “the econ­o­my is prob­a­bly at the same state as it was in 2015, when he came in­to of­fice.”

In ad­di­tion, the coun­try faced the high­est mur­der rate un­der his regime.

“He had to re­sort, in the end, to the State of Emer­gency to try to quell things down,” he said.

Ra­goonath said Row­ley had more go­ing against him with the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the dead Drag­on gas deal, poor roads and his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fail­ure to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

The pop­u­la­tion could not di­gest the sig­nif­i­cant salary in­creas­es for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans as it demon­strat­ed that “all they were con­cerned about was their self-in­ter­est.”

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Row­ley was most de­spised be­cause of his lack of charis­ma.

“The pop­u­la­tion was al­ways to blame for all the ills of gov­er­nance. Is Row­ley an au­then­tic leader? Yes, he is but I will not cat­e­gorise his au­then­tic­i­ty as pos­i­tive, even in the con­text of what you see is what you get,” he said.

Mo­hammed said Row­ley’s ar­ro­gance and ad­ver­sar­i­al ap­proach to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pop­u­la­tion caused dis­con­tent in his gov­ern­ment.

“Peo­ple be­came frus­trat­ed.”

He said Man­ning demon­strat­ed charis­ma, charm and elo­quence.

“He un­der­stood that per­son­al griev­ances should not stymie the na­tion­al progress and de­vel­op­ment, as well as bi­par­ti­san­ship in Par­lia­ment and gov­er­nance.

“Man­ning took po­lit­i­cal risks and whilst it cost him the gov­ern­ment he was one of the con­trib­u­tors to col­lab­o­ra­tive lead­er­ship and po­lit­i­cal pi­cong but al­so mu­tu­al re­spect for peo­ple and col­leagues.”

Claim­ing that Man­ning far out­shone Row­ley, he added: “He un­der­stood what tru­ly re­build­ing a par­ty was all about.”

Even with el­e­ments of hubris be­tween 2007 and 2010, Man­ning paid a price, Mo­hammed said.

“In the years be­fore he was a gen­tle­man, con­nect­ed to the peo­ple, a man of all sea­sons and one who did not have ven­om for his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. He un­der­stood his role as prime min­is­ter, a politi­cian and a states­man.”

Man­ning died in 2016.

Some of Man­ning’s achieve­ments (Put in box)

*Built NA­PA, SAPA, UTT and the Wa­ter­front Project

*Es­tab­lished GATE, CEPEP and CDAP pro­grammes, as well as the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund

*Con­cep­tu­alised Vi­sion 2020

*Re­boot­ed the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Some of Row­ley’s achieve­ments (Put in box)

*Han­dling the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic

*Restora­tion of the Red House and Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings

*Con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin, Ari­ma, San­gre Grande and Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

* Bring­ing the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in­to use.

*Com­mis­sioned the To­ba­go Air­port.

*Tack­led the sea bridge fi­as­co

* Ex­pand­ed the road net­work.