Protecting a nation from harm

“I regard your safety as my most important and immediate task. I’ve already contacted the security forces and I have been assured of their support in protecting this nation from harm, both from within and without.” —Basdeo Panday: First Address to the Nation as Prime Minister, 1995.

The loss of a beloved one poses unique challenges but the passing of the Honourable Basdeo Panday makes coming to terms with his loss uniquely difficult. The first week of January 2024 has witnessed a tremendous outpouring of grief and love for Mr Panday—the young and old, the rich and poor, people of all races, religions and walks of life came from near and far to pay their respects as his body lay in state at the Rotunda of the Parliament Building of Trinidad and Tobago. What is the greatness of this political icon that has inspired such an overwhelming reaction?

OF all the tributes that came in for late former prime minister Basdeo Panday, the one that stuck with me the most was provided by another former PM and current Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Among the many superlatives used to describe Panday, Persad-Bissessar described him as “an undisputed post-colonial Caribbean visionary leader”. Panday wasn’t simply the first Indo-Trinidadian prime minister.

The state funeral of former prime minister Basdeo Panday has highlighted, in many ways, the best aspects of our ­otherwise crime-besieged nation.

The event, the first under Hindu rites, which was ­attended by hundreds, went off smoothly—a tribute to the ­public servants and the various arms of the Defence Force which had responsibility for logistics and protocol. Mr Panday himself would, no doubt, have been amused that his funeral also had the defining Trini element with two public figures attempting to “storm” it.

Throughout recorded history mankind has sought to leave testament of the fact that they were once in this world. Some last for millennia, as the monuments in Egypt, while others—like a child’s footprint in wet cement, or a name cut into the bark of a tree—may last only a few decades.

The Department of Political Science of The University of the West Indies (The UWI), St Augustine, pays tribute to dearly departed political patriots Basdeo Panday (aged 90) and Hochoy Charles (aged 77), and offers sincere condolences to their families, friends and well-wishers.

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