Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) chair­man Joseph Toney has called for a Pat Bish­op cul­tur­al schol­ar­ship.

"The COP sug­gests that the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers in­sti­tut­ing a spe­cial schol­ar­ship named in her ho­n­our," Toney said in a news re­lease yes­ter­day. "This schol­ar­ship should be ad­min­is­tered through the Min­istry of the Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. "It should be award­ed to young artistes and cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers in Ms Bish­op's ho­n­our to con­tin­ue do­ing what she did, which was to pro­vide ster­ling lead­er­ship in the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion's cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty."Toney said the COP was of the view that the cul­tur­al land­scape of the coun­try had been de­prived of one of its biggest and most splen­did mon­u­ments. "Her en­tire life was spent de­vel­op­ing an in­tel­lec­tu­al ap­proach to the doc­u­men­ta­tion and preser­va­tion of the cul­tur­al ge­nius of our coun­try.

"Pat Bish­op was a cul­tur­al ac­tivist who held a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic in­sight, prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and a pi­o­neer­ing in­tel­li­gence in the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion's cul­tur­al hori­zon." Mean­while, Steve Al­varez, leader of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of T&T, an­oth­er of the par­ties in the coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, said: "I think this gen­er­a­tion has failed to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ford­ed us by our par­ents and pa­tri­ots like Pat Bish­op, Allyson Hen­nessy and many oth­ers who passed on re­cent­ly. I must ad­mit, how­ev­er, it is not too late. As long as we are alive we can make the changes nec­es­sary."

Al­varez said T&T was plagued with dai­ly mur­ders, il­le­gal squat­ting and land grab­bing, fear of eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion and a gen­er­al sense of hope­less­ness. "In­stead of seek­ing so­lu­tions many of us seem to be ob­sessed with plac­ing blame. "We blame politi­cians, race, unions and re­li­gion. The so­lu­tion is uni­ty. "Please let not the lives of our pa­tri­ots be in vain. Let us learn to look be­yond our self­ish de­sires," Al­varez said.