From diplo­mats to the man on the street, peo­ple from all cor­ners of the coun­try showed up at the Red House to pay their re­spects to late for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day.

Be­gin­ning from 8 am to 6 pm, a con­do­lence book placed in the Ro­tun­da was opened to the pub­lic in mem­o­ry of Pan­day. This at­tract­ed sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi.

Sev­er­al diplo­mats al­so signed the book in­clud­ing am­bas­sadors from Cu­ba, Ko­rea, Japan and Brazil.

Al­so pay­ing her re­spects was British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go Har­ri­et Cross who re­called fond mo­ments of meet­ing and in­ter­act­ing with Pan­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter sign­ing the book, High Com­mis­sion­er Cross said, “He was a man who had many dif­fer­ent roles in his life and I have been fas­ci­nat­ed to read about his life par­tic­u­lar­ly his ear­ly life as an ac­tor. He was such an in­ter­est­ing man. He ac­tu­al­ly act­ed in one of our British films.”

Cross said it was im­por­tant for her to be present yes­ter­day.

“I had the great plea­sure of meet­ing him at this very build­ing at the Red House and hav­ing a re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with him about poli­cies and he had such a nu­anced view. I think some­times peo­ple see pol­i­tics as very much black and white and right and wrong and he had a re­al­ly nu­anced sense of how to make progress and he was some­one who re­al­ly built a lot of bridges and I think those are the types of states­men and women we need in the world to­day.

“So that’s one of the rea­sons I want­ed to come and pay my re­spects, not just per­son­al­ly hav­ing met him my­self but al­so on be­half of the peo­ple of the Unit­ed King­dom,” she added.

Busi­ness­man Robert Amar al­so re­flect­ed on his re­la­tion­ship with Pan­day.

“I have some fond mem­o­ries of him as I trav­elled with him to In­dia for ex­am­ple and re­mem­ber a lot of nice things that hap­pened.

“He was a per­son that re­al­ly lis­tened and gave me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the coun­try … and un­less this coun­try doesn’t take note of some of the his­tor­i­cal things that peo­ple like Mr Pan­day did, we’ll go nowhere,” Amar said.

From diplo­mat­ic ties to those he had rifts with, peo­ple were keen to ho­n­our Pan­day’s mem­o­ry. Among them, me­dia mogul and busi­ness­man Ken Gor­don said de­spite their dif­fer­ences Pan­day will be deeply missed.

“I am very sad­dened by the news of his pass­ing. Mr Pan­day, I’ve known him for a very long time. He and I did have a prob­lem at the courts. But one evening about three or four months af­ter the judg­ment, I was walk­ing out of St Mary’s Col­lege from a func­tion and I just felt this per­son grabbed me from be­hind and say “Ken, Ken, we’re friends”... I feel deeply sad­dened gen­uine­ly so. We shall all miss him,” Gor­don said.

The con­do­lence book will be avail­able for sign­ing at the Red House to­day and Mon­day from 8 am to 6 pm.