The dogs of hell are barking

I’ve not consulted an old calendar or spun my crystal ball counter-clockwise, but I’m pretty sure that the 17th of August, 1946 did not fall on a Monday in the municipality of San Fernando. It might have been a Monday in another town of the isle of Trinidad or perhaps Monday in some hamlet over on the companion island of Tobago, but not down south. No way. If I’m inaccurate in my non-calculations, and August 17, 1946 was a Monday in San Fernando, then our Prime Minister, born to us on that date, the Honourable Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning, is in a bigger picker patch than we imagined. This means two things: we now reside in the realm of the unimaginable and God is truly a Trini because He’s drinking too much before He puts His hand on the steering wheel. So, I cannot be wrong. August 17, 1946 was not a Monday.

How can I make such an impious declaration with such certainty, equanimity, and moreover, such lack of temerity for God’s or Manning’s retribution? Why am I converting myself into an easy target for the nitpicking religious readers and/or the Sunday morning radio PNM apologists? The events of last Monday, my brothers and sisters are the basis for my theories, the light and the way, if you will, that have led me to my determination. No theologian am I, but good grief, the conclusion is clear for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and brains to think. Let us take a look at the PM’s Monday. His was literally, a rude awakening because Patrick rose to the horrific vision of his bete noire, Marlene, walking triumphantly out of the San Fernando High Court. This was a woman who Patrick’s God had promised him He would punish because Marlene was not obeisant to her PM. Marlene had refused to be moved either by threat or entreaty when her Prime Minister told her to go to hell, sorry, to Point Fortin.

But not only had Marlene declared she would never bend to his, Manning’s desires; she had exited the lion’s den, her hand wrapped in that of David’s, a big Chinese Creole man called Larry who had was clobbering Patrick politically. There the two were, like a couple of “Judases,” glowing in their mutual love for each other and their disdain for him, and basking nicely in the media spotlight. This was a sight no man or Prime Minister should have to behold on the day he came into the world. The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago was no Solomon Grundy. He was Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning, not born again on a Monday.

If August 17, 1946 had been a Monday in San Fernando, then all the calumny that was raining on him, Patrick on Monday March 22, 2004, would have been a sure sign that his God was sitting in the Oval, sipping a rum and coke and watching West Indies “cricket”; that He had said “to hell with Patrick” and we all knew that would never happen to the chosen one. Patrick’s God would never be so cruel, so negligent or in His cups. Would He? Would He, on a Monday, desert the one He had brought into this world, on a Monday? Well, would He, brethren? Think about it.

On a Tuesday, perhaps, but not on the same day of the week He had brought Patrick to save us. Neither would He, on the very day of the week Patrick landed in San Fernando, toss him into the mouths of a pack of “jackals” in the backbench who were tearing at his Prime Ministerial authority. No. Patrick’s God would have been at Patrick’s side, permitting Patrick to swear at the lot of them, instead of having to see them sworn in as Ministers. His God would have been hanging around Monday to lift Patrick out of the depths of political prostration if Patrick had been born on a Monday.

He knew that Patrick knew best, after Him, naturally. Or was it heavenly? His God had told Patrick that businessman Howard Chin Lee was better suited for National Security than Fitzgerald Hinds, lawyer and ex-policeman, that Hazel was more au courant in matters of education than Hinds, shadow Education Minister during the years the PNM was wandering in the political wilderness, when they were sitting on the left hand of the Speaker. Patrick’s God had also led him to believe that he could wave his right hand and dispense with Eudine and Diane and with the same hand, shuffle Marlene off into obscurity like she was some vanquished plastic piece on a celestial checkers board.

So He would never, on the day Patrick came to San Fernando and to Trinidad and Tobago, make him see these two — God forbid — women, brandishing their papers of ministerial appointment like swords before him. His was a merciful, benevolent God. Moreover, his God was not a woman. His God, a man, had come to Patrick and told him that he could treat the Big Chinese Larry like a little boy. Would He thus, now turn the other cheek, a blind eye and a deaf ear and allow Larry, Judas, David or whatever he was called, to speak in non-Manning tongues on the day Patrick was born? Never.

No, brothers and sisters, August 17, 1946 did not fall on a Monday. If it had, then Patrick’s God would not, on a Monday, have abandoned His son in a political hell where there were insolent dogs barking everywhere. Not when He had promised Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning the same paradise on earth that He had given Eric Eustace Williams: a sacred Trinidad and Tobago where the Prime Minister could damn the very institutions he had put in place to protect public servants, a divine realm where women did as they were commanded and a serene land where there was no one named Larry.

Suzanne Mills is the editor of the daily Newsday.