Manning: Achong is still Labour Minister

While Larry Achong made it crystal clear that he had quit his job as Labour Minister last Friday, his employer, Prime Minister Patrick Manning, yesterday made it plain that until the Prime Minister accepts his resignation, Achong still had responsibility for the Labour portfolio. Manning’s announcement came after yesterday’s regular session of the Cabinet at which Achong, having begun his retirement from ministerial duties, did not attend.

The tenor of Achong’s two line resignation and his statements since then, that there was no question of returning to the Cabinet, appear to have given the Prime Minister little option (but to accept his resignation). But Manning contended yesterday that Achong was still substantively the Minister of Labour. “The Prime Minister has not yet accepted the resignation of the Minister of Labour. Until the resignation is accepted, the Minister of Labour  (Larry Achong)  remains in place,” the PM told the  post-Cabinet news conference. The Prime Minister also explained that the resignation was submitted to the Prime Minister, and therefore it was up to the Prime Minister — who advised the President to make the appointment in the first place — to advise him (the President) to cancel or not cancel the appointment. The President has not been so advised, Manning said.

It is understood that emissaries have been dispatched to Tobago, where Achong is vacationing, to seek some kind of reapproachment with the estranged Labour Minister, whose criticism has been the source of much embarrassment to the government. But while Achong has been talking freely, what he sees as Government’s mishandling of the ALNG issue, his Prime Minister continued to avoid any confrontation with the Point Fortin MP. “So far I have chosen not to speak on the matter until I am in a position to do so,” Manning stated,  adding that he expected to be in a position to speak fully on the matter on either Monday or Tuesday, (the same time that Achong has promised to make a definitive statement on his political future).
Asked if he was gun-shy, Manning said: “That was one way of looking at it. Another way (of looking at it) is what my mother told me — speak softly or don’t speak at all, and carry a big stick’.”

On Achong’s reference to a split in the Cabinet involving the three Diego Martin Mps, Colm Imbert, who was seated next to Manning, said he had “absolutely no idea” what his colleague was talking about. He revealed that Dr Saith had been mediating in the ALNG dispute and that “substantial progress” had been made. “But only time would tell, how substantial,” he said. Although he received a lot of flak for it, the Prime Minister made light of his feigned attack of laryngitis, wondering aloud whether people had lost their sense of humour.