For­mer Chair­man of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Dr Jef­fer­son David­son, is be­ing re­mem­bered as a gen­uine To­bag­on­ian who fought for the is­land to have its own ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers and au­ton­o­my.

Dr David­son, 95, passed away on Sat­ur­day in To­ba­go. He hailed from Rox­bor­ough.

Dr David­son was the sec­ond chair­man of the THA serv­ing a four-year term from 1986, im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing ANR Robin­son's de­par­ture from the As­sem­bly to be­come Prime Min­is­ter of T&T. How­ev­er, he did not com­plete the term in of­fice and was re­placed by Lennox De­noon. The Chief Sec­re­tary was then called the Chair­man and the As­sem­bly's clerk per­formed the du­ties of the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Dr David­son re­ceived the To­ba­go Medal Of Ho­n­our–Gold from Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

He was one of sev­en for­mer as­sem­bly­men who en­dorsed the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Au­gust 10, 2020.

"He was a per­fect gen­tle­man and a won­der­ful cit­i­zen," To­ba­go econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, up­on find­ing out about Dr David­son's death.

Dr James said Dr David­son brought sci­en­tif­ic ca­pa­bil­i­ties to the task of man­ag­ing the is­land's de­vel­op­ment process­es. Dr James said he was very pro­gres­sive in do­ing things on the is­land that would ul­ti­mate­ly lead to To­ba­go be­ing bet­ter de­vel­oped for its cit­i­zens.

Dr James added:

"When it comes to gov­ern­ment re­form, he was ex­treme­ly strong on the point of up­grad­ing the THA to en­sure that we could have the ca­pa­bil­i­ties in To­ba­go to make laws and to con­trol ex­ec­u­tive pow­ers here. Jeff was very strong on that in his con­ver­sa­tions with me over the years, ex­treme­ly strong on that par­tic­u­lar point. He nev­er man­aged to get it done him­self, but he ful­ly sup­port­ed that idea and that agen­da for To­ba­go."

The econ­o­mist told the Guardian Me­dia that while Dr David­son did not suc­ceed in win­ning in­ter­nal self-gov­er­nance for the is­land, he was clear that those that fol­lowed him should not give up the fight.

"He had a good ad­min­is­tra­tion giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of the THA at the time when he was chair­man," Dr James said.

Giv­en that he spent just one term in of­fice, Dr James said Dr David­son couldn't ac­com­plish much but he did his "very, very best".

Dr James con­clud­ed:

"Jeff was a gen­uine To­bag­on­ian with the best in­ter­est at heart for our peo­ple. One of the sources of cred­i­bil­i­ty of the whole move­ment led my Robin­son was that To­ba­go's se­nior in­tel­lec­tu­als all signed on and Jeff was among those who didn't hold back so lent a lot of cred­i­bil­i­ty to the po­lit­i­cal move­ment to win both in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment and ul­ti­mate­ly more au­ton­o­my."