In a week of SEA ex­am­i­na­tions and rag­ing de­bates in Par­lia­ment, the fifth an­niver­sary of the pass­ing of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning slipped by qui­et­ly.

It was on the morn­ing of Ju­ly 2, five years ago, that Mr Man­ning, the longest-serv­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, passed.

Two days be­fore, on June 30, 2016, he was di­ag­nosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. Pri­or to that, he was re­cov­er­ing from a stroke he had suf­fered in Jan­u­ary 2012.

As with any politi­cian, the views of whether he served well or not are of­ten coloured by the po­lit­i­cal side on which one sits.

But the trib­utes that were paid af­ter his pass­ing showed that re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions, most agreed that he had left a mark on the na­tion if on­ly for the vi­sions that drove him.

As a Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and Nat­ur­al Re­sources ear­ly in his ca­reer, he was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of the Point Lisas es­tate and the coun­try’s en­er­gy in­dus­try at large.

So, as prime min­is­ter, he was in a good po­si­tion to know that en­er­gy would not sus­tain us and that we need­ed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

Among his vi­sions was the cre­ation of a ther­mo-plas­tics in­dus­try via a polypropy­lene plant. He felt the down­stream man­u­fac­tur­ing po­ten­tials of plas­tics were im­mense and promised to make it a fo­cus of his new term pri­or to los­ing the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions.

He want­ed to build an alu­minum smelter to al­so ex­pand the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in­to pro­duc­ing raw ma­te­ri­als for ve­hi­cles and air­craft and had an­nounced a na­tion­al high­way plan with six high­ways criss-cross­ing the coun­try, not just for ease of trans­port, but to de­vel­op more eco­nom­ic spaces for the spread of busi­ness­es and in­dus­tries.

As grand as it seemed at the time, he felt a rapid rail was not out of reach and would have boost­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by cut­ting down the long hours spent in traf­fic.

His too, was a vi­sion of off­shore pa­trol ves­sels, hop­ing to cut off the sup­ply chain of il­le­gal drugs and weapons in­to the coun­try. With en­er­gy still our ma­jor rev­enue earn­er, he was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of methanol and am­mo­nia prod­ucts and was aim­ing to in­tro­duce an­oth­er train at At­lantic LNG to con­vert and ex­port more nat­ur­al gas.

His work to ex­pand the en­er­gy sec­tor was her­ald­ed even by those po­lit­i­cal­ly op­posed to him.

For­mer UNC en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine wrote of Mr Man­ning in 2016, “As far as the en­er­gy sec­tor is con­cerned he al­ways act­ed to place the na­tion­al in­ter­est and the big­ger pic­ture ahead of all else. If to­day we en­joy the best stan­dard of liv­ing in the Caribbean it is be­cause of his de­ci­sions around the mon­eti­sa­tion of our nat­ur­al gas re­sources.”

As prime min­is­ter, he al­so in­tro­duced Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE), giv­ing free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion to thou­sands for the first time ever in T&T.

To­day, as the coun­try bat­tles the so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of COVID-19, we are helped by with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF), cre­at­ed in March 2007 un­der Mr Man­ning’s lead­er­ship.

He was not with­out er­rors, most mem­o­rably two snap elec­tions that the PNM lost, and his broad trust in Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart di­vid­ed his Cab­i­net and pre­ced­ed his fi­nal de­feat at the polls.

How­ev­er, few could de­ny that through the good and the bad, he had T&T at heart.

Whether for his grace­ful re­la­tions with his op­po­site House mem­ber Bas­deo Pan­day, or his trade­mark po­lit­i­cal war cry—“We will beat them in the east, we will beat them in the west...”—Mr Man­ning’s mem­o­ries have most­ly been warm across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum.

Above all, it is for the ser­vice he gave dur­ing his po­lit­i­cal run from 1971 to 2015, that he earned his place as one of the most valu­able politi­cians T&T has ever had.

Five years lat­er, may he con­tin­ue to rest in peace.