Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors yes­ter­day agreed it was im­por­tant to recog­nise for­mer lead­ers, in­clud­ing the late Er­ic Williams and George Cham­bers, as well as ANR Robin­son, Bas­deo Pan­day and Patrick Man­ning. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie voiced Gov­ern­ment's ap­proval in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, speak­ing on a mo­tion on the is­sue from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Corinne Bap­tiste-McK­night.

Bap­tiste-McK­night asked Gov­ern­ment to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty of the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence to in­sti­tute a state-fund­ed arrange­ment where­by the con­tri­bu­tions of all who served in the of­fices of Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­is­ter will be recog­nised.

She sug­gest­ed for­mal memo­ri­als of the work and con­tri­bu­tions of all for­mer heads of state and heads of Gov­ern­ment in or­der to have au­then­tic records of T&T's evo­lu­tion. "I plead with the Gov­ern­ment not to miss this op­por­tu­ni­ty," Bap­tiste-McK­night added.

Bap­tiste-McK­night not­ed the ex­ist­ing Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al col­lec­tion, the Robin­son Cas­tara Project and UWI's Sir El­lis Clarke Chair. She said the pro­posed ef­fort should ex­tend to en­cour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ties to pro­duce records of their own ac­tivists. Bap­tiste-McK­night sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment hold dis­cus­sions with the uni­ver­si­ty, which hous­es the Er­ic Williams Col­lec­tion and Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell, to have the com­plete col­lec­tion in this coun­try.

She sug­gest­ed that the best lo­ca­tion was the Her­itage Li­brary in Port-of-Spain, op­po­site Wood­ford Square, with which Williams al­so had his­to­ry. On Robin­son, Bap­tiste-McK­night said she did not think there would ever be an­oth­er per­son in her life­time who held the ti­tles of THA head, prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent as Robin­son had.

She said his doc­u­ments should be in Un­esco's Mem­o­ry of the World. Bap­tiste-McK­night said Pan­day's life and ex­pe­ri­ences led her to be­lieve his memo­r­i­al would be of great ben­e­fit. Say­ing Man­ning's achieve­ments were al­so sub­stan­tial, Bap­tiste-McK­night said she sus­pect­ed Man­ning would out­live her.

She said the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter's achieve­ments would al­so need to be record­ed. Bap­tiste-McK­night sug­gest­ed dis­cus­sions be held with those still alive to al­low them to iden­ti­fy a pre­ferred lo­ca­tion for their doc­u­ments. Say­ing the tourism val­ue of the idea should not be lost, Bap­tiste-McK­night said memo­ri­als need not be in Port-of-Spain, but should all be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. She not­ed the pro­posed UWI cam­pus in South and Rien­zi Com­plex in Cen­tral.

Tewarie al­so said T&T need­ed to con­cede that lead­ers' con­tri­bu­tions should be ac­knowl­edged and the op­por­tu­ni­ty of the 50th an­niver­sary should be seized. Sug­gest­ing wider in­volve­ment, he not­ed that in many places the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er sec­tors of so­ci­ety al­so fund­ed such col­lec­tions.

Tewarie said T&T could nev­er go far enough in ac­knowl­edg­ing Williams' con­tri­bu­tion. He said Williams found­ed the first se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ty in T&T and the coun­try con­tin­ued to fol­low de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples be­tween 1971 and 1976 when there was no Op­po­si­tion. "It was no mean achieve­ment, and this needs to be ac­knowl­edged," Tewarie said.

Tewarie said Robin­son, with whom he served, was a brave man in break­ing out of To­ba­go pol­i­tics and in­to the Trinidad land­scape. Not­ing the 1990 siege of the Par­lia­ment, he said Robin­son was a man "of great met­tle." Tewarie said Cham­bers made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion by shift­ing di­rec­tion. He said T&T be­gan to go in that di­rec­tion and the NAR ad­min­is­tra­tion ben­e­fit­ed from it.

Tewarie said he had in­ter­act­ed with Pan­day in and out of gov­ern­ment and out of pol­i­tics. Say­ing Pan­day had made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion, Tewarie said it seemed Pan­day has nev­er been out of pol­i­tics. Tewarie said Man­ning had chal­lenges but his achieve­ments al­so have to be ac­knowl­edged, and the time would come when the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter's achieve­ments would be tak­en in­to ac­count.