Suzanne Shep­pard

Regi­nald Du­mas, who served as Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter and head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice from 1988 to 1990, was an out­spo­ken ad­vo­cate for trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and good gov­er­nance.

The re­tired diplo­mat and pub­lic ser­vant died at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in To­ba­go on Thurs­day night. He was 88 and had been hos­pi­talised since un­der­go­ing surgery last month.

Du­mas will be re­mem­bered, not on­ly for his long and il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer and sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to T&T, Cari­com and even fur­ther afield, but for his post-re­tire­ment ad­vo­ca­cy work and en­dur­ing com­mit­ment to na­tion­al ser­vice and eth­i­cal lead­er­ship.

His par­ents were To­bag­on­ian but Du­mas spent his ear­ly child­hood in Ch­agua­nas, where his moth­er worked as a mid­wife and the dis­trict nurse.

His fa­ther died when he was 10 and in 1949, when he was 14, the fam­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to Tu­na­puna.

A few years lat­er, in 1952, Du­mas was among three boys from that com­mu­ni­ty award­ed Is­land Schol­ar­ships. The oth­er two were Lloyd Best and John Nee­hall.

He served in the civ­il ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment from 1959 to 1962, then moved on to work in the for­eign ser­vice for a new­ly in­de­pen­dent T&T.

Du­mas was sent to Wash­ing­ton, DC, where he worked un­der T&T Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States, El­lis Clarke, who lat­er be­came this coun­try’s first pres­i­dent.

He was just 30 years old when he was giv­en his first ma­jor for­eign ser­vice as­sign­ment to make the on-site arrange­ments for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams’ trip to Africa in 1964 and then to open a T&T Em­bassy in Ad­dis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, the fol­low­ing year.

Dur­ing his tenure in the for­eign ser­vice, Du­mas ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in mul­ti­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions on be­half of T&T and Cari­com, us­ing his con­sid­er­able diplo­mat­ic skills to pro­mote re­gion­al co-op­er­a­tion and di­a­logue.

As High Com­mis­sion­er to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean from 1985 to 1987, his fo­cus was on fos­ter­ing re­la­tions with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Du­mas went on to rep­re­sent T&T on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage as Am­bas­sador to the US and Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) from 1987 to 1988.

In 1988, af­ter sev­er­al years in the for­eign ser­vice, where he al­so served as T&T’s am­bas­sador in Ethiopia, In­dia and Cana­da, Du­mas was ap­point­ed head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice and played a cru­cial role in gov­er­nance and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms as chair of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Re­form Task Force.

Long af­ter his re­tire­ment from the pub­lic ser­vice, Du­mas re­mained ac­tive in lo­cal and re­gion­al af­fairs. In 1998, he co-found­ed the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute, the na­tion­al chap­ter of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al.

In 2004, he was asked by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Kofi An­nan to serve as UN Spe­cial Ad­vis­er on Haiti, a post he held for more than six months. That ex­pe­ri­ence in­spired his book, An En­counter with Haiti: Notes of a Spe­cial Ad­vis­er, in which he doc­u­ment­ed his ex­pe­ri­ences with the UN and Cari­com, with Haiti as the cen­tral fo­cus.

In 2011, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, con­ferred up­on him the ti­tle of Doc­tor of Laws and in the ci­ta­tion he was de­scribed as “a na­tion-builder, a diplo­mat ex­tra­or­di­naire, a sage and one who is de­serv­ing of our high­est ho­n­our”.

That year he was al­so ho­n­oured by the Hait­ian Stud­ies As­so­ci­a­tion (HSA) for his work in Haiti.

An in­sight­ful writer, in 1995 Du­mas au­thored an­oth­er book, In the Ser­vice of the Pub­lic, a com­pi­la­tion of ar­ti­cles, speech­es and com­men­taries doc­u­ment­ing his work be­tween 1963 and 1993.

Du­mas al­so wrote a mem­oir, The First Thir­ty Years: A Ret­ro­spec­tion, high­light­ing dif­fer­ent stages of his ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reer up to age 30.

His daugh­ter Son­ja, who an­nounced his pass­ing in a state­ment on Thurs­day night, wrote: “He fought an ex­tend­ed chal­lenge of gas­troin­testi­nal fail­ure over the past few weeks at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. We thank the var­i­ous med­ical, sur­gi­cal and anaes­the­sia teams for their Her­culean ef­forts to bring him back to health. We thank, too, all the friends, al­lies, fam­i­ly mem­bers and strangers who do­nat­ed blood and helped in var­i­ous ways as ad­vo­cates for his re­cov­ery.

“He leaves a lega­cy of in­tegri­ty and hon­esty that I hope to fol­low as long as I’m on the plan­et, and per­haps be­yond. He is my an­ces­tor now, look­ing down on me, guid­ing me. For many, he was a great diplo­mat, a great or­a­tor and great po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst. He fought tire­less­ly for good gov­er­nance. His gen­eros­i­ty touched count­less peo­ple, as did his wit (which was of­ten acer­bic). He wasn’t in any way per­fect. He was more stub­born than ten mules put to­geth­er and could dis­miss you with a short, tart phrase when he’d had enough of what he thought was non­sense. But his heart was huge and his mind bril­liant.

“Last night we lis­tened to jazz while I read the pa­pers to him. We laughed, as usu­al, at the re­port­ed fol­lies of peo­ple grap­pling for pow­er, lament­ed the state of Car­ni­val as de­scribed in one of the ar­ti­cles and cringed at the ema­ci­at­ed kan­ga­roo.

“He was the biggest, safest rock in my life and I love him be­yond mea­sure. The mem­o­ries will al­ways be there.

“I ask every­one for a cou­ple days of pri­vate time as my fam­i­ly comes to terms with this cav­ernous loss.”