Manning’s mysterious death threats
These death threats come every couple of years. Will there be one next year?
In the heat of the historic 1956 general election campaign, the People’s National Movement announced that it discovered plans to kidnap Dr Eric Williams’ five-year-old daughter, Erica.
There was police protection but nothing ever happened but Sparrow and other calypsonians sang about it.
At a public meeting at Arima, Prime Minister Patrick Manning disclosed a plot that was hatched one year ago to assassinate him. The Prime Minister put severe pressure on his credibility since this was the third in the past six years he told of “death threats”. The threats to his life earned him banner front page headlines in the daily newspapers.
The dire warnings of terminal physical attacks on his person, the last two having been issued around the anniversary of the attempted coup, would also lead many people to believe that he is a bit economical with the truth, particularly, since the last warning occurred one year ago and no report was made to the police.
The “death threats” evoked much comment on talk shows on radio and television and there not many people who were prepared to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt.
It was the first time Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert, who was recommended by the Prime Minister, himself, last year, for the post after then Senior Superintendent Stephen Williams was chosen by the Police Service Commission, was hearing about it.
On Tuesday, he appointed Deputy Police Commissioner Raymond Craig to investigate the matter.
Of course, Manning’s political opponents scoffed at his claims with United National Congress political leader Basdeo Panday challenging Manning to “undergo a lie detector test”.
The anonymous person who warned Manning’s wife Hazel of the assassination plot somehow was able to convince the Local Government bureaucracy at Kent House that he should have a personal audience with her without a prior appointment. Well, then it was a matter of death or life.
We will have to wait on Deputy Commissioner Craig’s report or further information from the Prime Minister at his public meeting at Center Pointe Mall, Chaguanas, on Monday night.