Former prime minister Basdeo Panday says the best honour the State can give the late Sir Ellis Clarke is a new T&T Constitution.Panday, who served as prime minister from 1995 to 2001, spoke with reporters outside the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port-of-Spain after attending Friday's state funeral for Sir Ellis with his daughter, former Member of Parliament Mickela Panday.
Another former prime minister, Patrick Manning, was absent from the state funeral.He reportedly attended the private funeral for Sir Ellis at the Church of the Assumption in Maraval, which was held earlier in the day.Panday said: "The greatest honour we can pay Sir Ellis is to reform the Constitution."
He described Sir Ellis as "a very erudite man, very educated particularly with constitutional law and it will be a great honour if we reform the Constitution in his name."Former Foreign Affairs minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, who also attended the state funeral, said Sir Ellis would always be remembered as "a gentleman at heart, a quintessential man and a gift to this nation."
Gopee-Scoon described as "a good start," a decision by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to endow the Sir Ellis Clarke Chair in Commonwealth, Parliamentary and Constitutional Studies at the University of the West Indies. She insisted, however, that more things needed to be done in his honour.Gopee-Scoon suggested that a bust of Sir Ellis be placed inside the Parliament Chamber.