By RIA TAITT

PNM leader Patrick Manning is not likely to attend the opening of the Eric Williams memorial collection at the UWI campus, St. Augustine, on Sunday afternoon.

Manning, who left Trinidad yesterday morning, is in Venezuela "on business" for one week. He was invited to Sunday's opening as well as the reception to meet General Colin Powell, former US Joint Chief of Staff. He was also among the select persons who were "invited" to pay $2,000 to hear Powell deliver his address on Monday morning at the Hilton hotel.

But PNM's deputy Political Leader Ken Valley stressed yesterday that the party would be well represented at Sunday's function. He said a number of MPs, and vice chairman John Donaldson, were invited and would be attending.

"I think we will all want to be there, is Eric Williams you talking about,[so] that should go without saying. Every PNMite who is invited I will expect them to attend because you talking about the founder of the party," he said. Valley, who is due to leave for Antigua on Sunday morning, said he was int he process of rearranging his flight for a later time in the evening.

Erica Williams-Connell, speaking on TV6's Morning Edition yesterday, noted that the collection would be the only one of its kind in the Caribbean.

She said she wanted the collection, which would consist of 8,000 books, papers and manuscripts from Williams to act as a quasi-museum as well as re-create his study, to speak to the soul of a nation, "to people living and to those not yet born."

She said she decided to "modify" his wish to have nothing done in his memory (and set up the collection) for the same reason that she decided to amend his desire to have a strictly private funeral-because the outpouring of grief from the people and the impact of his death was too profound to ignore.

On yesterday's programme Williams-Connell was asked by several callers why she did not become active in local politics. Stressing that she didn't want to denigrate the seriousness of the callers who asked the question, Williams-Connell said: "Just because you could cook doesn't mean tot say you want to be a chef. I really do not think that that is for me. I feel that I have found my niche and I feel very, very strongly that it is in the dispassionate glow of academia that Eric Williams's successes and his failures will be seen and properly analysed.

Williams-Connell said politics was a dirty business because you cannot please all of the people all of the time. "So right before you even start you have shot yourself in the foot," she said, adding that expectations were "unnaturally high."

"We expect of our leaders what we do not expect of ourselves. It's not for me," she stated.