Rosemarie Sant
GML ENTERPRISE DESK
She has been a PNM stalwart who supported Patrick Manning during his four decades in politics and when he died Christine Levia, better known as Twiggy, told the GML Enterprise Desk, “I cried and I am still crying,” as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Although she had been expecting it after Mr Manning fell ill, Twiggy said she always hoped for the best. “I knew he is a fighter, so I was shocked when I got the news.”
She said on Saturdays she would normally go to the market, “but Saturday morning my mind say stay home, the vibes I get, I stay and start to clean and wash. While I was washing I get a phone call, once my home phone ring I know is important. The person at the other end did not speak, I say ‘meh father dead,’ the person say ‘yes,’ I just drop the phone down.”
She recounted her deep admiration and respect for Mr Manning who, she said, was like a father to her, “more of a father to me than my own father. After my mother died it was Mr Manning who took care of me. There was nothing that me and my children wanted that he did not help us with,” she said.
Twiggy’s association with Manning started when he first entered politics.
She said: “I was not of age to go upstairs in Parliament but I used to sit downstairs and wait for him. I always admired him. He had courage, faith and patience.”
She said Manning always took the time to listen to people. “He never shun me or pass me, he would listen to my problems and complaints. That is the most respectable man in the PNM.”
She said they talked about everything and when in 2010 he called an early election she was one of the first to question his decision. But she said he told her he had to do it because there were some in the party who were plotting to bring a no-confidence motion against him. She said he told her there were “people in the PNM who wanted to assassinate me, they want to kill me.” But she said he was determined to stand up to them. According to Twiggy, he told her he wanted to be able to “go home peacefully.”
It’s now history that the PNM lost the May 24, 2010, general election. Twiggy said from then it was a real fight down, “his own people was fighting him, it wasn’t UNC or NJAC or anybody else, it was the same PNM people whom he brought into the party who wanted him out. They fought Mr Manning right down to the end.”
Twiggy denied that she was ever part of any movement or protest to get Mr Manning to leave the PNM after the defeat. “I was always loyal to Mr Manning, in all his 44 years in politics I never gave him up, because he always took time to listen,” she said. Twiggy said, “Mr Manning was one of the greatest men in politics in this country but he had it up and down with them (those who were opposed to him).”
She said although he died with calm and peace last Saturday, he never recovered from “the hurt and humiliation at the way he was asked to leave the PNM.”
She said, “They fought Mr Manning right down to the end, they fight my father out of the party, the party which he build. Where were they when it was 33-3 and Mr Manning was rebuilding the party? All of them who want to talk now, I wasn’t seeing them when it was 33-3, they were not there.”
Manning suffered a stroke in January 2012 and never fully recovered, but she believed that he got sick long before that. She said the former prime minister “got sick from the day he left Balisier House after they run him, he was sick, he was hurt by his own people,” she said. Manning never returned to Balisier House. Twiggy said she herself feels great pain when she passes by the headquarters which once had a special place in her heart, “I could show you I never went to renew my party card,” she said.
Twiggy said she can’t return to Balisier House because when they booed Manning and caused him to leave “it come like they boo me too, I feel sick at what the party has become.”
Today she said many of the people who were part of the conspiracy to get him to leave “they regret what they do, now they only have good things to say about Mr Manning. Since he died no bad word come out of anybody mouth.”
She laughed and cried during the interview as she recalled her relationship with Manning, “I called him daddy and he called me daughter.”
She boasts that Mr Manning often invited her to events and that she had met the Queen of England and the US President Barack Obama, whom Manning personally introduced her to when they were in Trinidad. She had photos to prove that she met them.
“He used to unite people, bring people together, look at what he did with Caricom. We called him dimple because of the dimples which showed when he smiled,” she said.
Twiggy said she had cause at times prior to 2010 to complain to Manning about the way things were going. “He would listen, he would come and visit us, see what was happening, Manning was on the ground with the troops. He helped real people who I carry to see him, they get house and jobs.
“He would stand tall, they will forever be in his shadow, because they can’t touch him,” she said of those who she said are today fighting among themselves for power. “He was a gentleman, a statesman, a powerful man.”
She boasted that she helped organise the troops for political meetings. “Mr Manning will call me and I would call my people and we would organise 30, 40 maxi taxis and people. He knew how important the ground troops were,” she said.
Admittedly he made mistakes, she said, no one is perfect, but she said he was someone who cared deeply about people. “That is a party that he built, that is the foundation.” Today, she said, the PNM “just have members, the PNM is far from the PNM we knew. I don’t regret saying it, before we could go to the party headquarters and feel like a family, is not like that no more.”
With the death of Manning she said the party now has some work to do. They lost Martin Joseph, Morris Marshall, all men whom people admired; today all there is in the PNM is “a rat race among those who want leadership.”
She has no intention of switching allegiance. “Look at me, I have a nice house, I have everything I want, a home. What else do I need? I don’t need any of them,” she said.