Le­gal lu­mi­nary Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, QC, was laid to rest in Bar­ba­dos on Sat­ur­day.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, sought to pay trib­ute to Ram­sa­hoye, a day af­ter he was cre­mat­ed at the Chapel of Coral Ridge Memo­r­i­al Gar­dens in Bar­ba­dos.

She said: “His un­par­al­leled con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of the law and pol­i­tics of the Caribbean has made an in­deli­ble im­pact that helped shape our no­tion of jus­tice and fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights.”

De­scrib­ing Ram­sa­hoye as the “grand­fa­ther of West In­di­an con­sti­tu­tion­al law,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that he was one of the few re­gion­al lawyers who had an im­pres­sive suc­cess rate at the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

“He made us proud and stood be­side us in our dark­est mo­ments,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sought to high­light sev­er­al land­mark con­sti­tu­tion­al cas­es in which the Guyana-born Ram­sa­hoye rep­re­sent­ed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

“In­deed, it was Sir Fen­ton who led the charge against the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing the 18-18 tie when it ap­point­ed all PNM MPs as gov­ern­ment min­is­ters so that they paid a salary whilst it re­fused to pay the 18 UNC elect­ed MPs.

“Al­though Sir Fen­ton lost this im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al case in both low­er courts, he was suc­cess­ful in the Privy Coun­cil which de­liv­ered a his­toric rul­ing in favour of the UNC MPs as a re­sult of which Gov­ern­ment was or­dered to pay the UNC MPs their salaries with retroac­tive ef­fect,” she said.

Ram­sa­hoye al­so rep­re­sent­ed for­mer UNC gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma in sev­er­al cas­es in­clud­ing against the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for fail­ing to dis­close the names of per­sons who had not filed their de­c­la­ra­tions.

“He al­so rep­re­sent­ed us in the Gyp­sy and Chai­tan elec­tions mat­ters on dual cit­i­zen­ship and chal­lenged the un­law­ful ex­er­cise of the Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al ve­to in the wake of the in­fa­mous traf­fick­ing of liq­uid co­caine via our diplo­mat­ic pouch­es when the PNM at­tempt­ed to block pub­lic of­fi­cer Fer­oza Ramjohn from as­sum­ing du­ties at the Lon­don High Com­mis­sion,” she said.

Ram­sa­hoye, a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al of Guyana, died at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal in Bar­ba­dos on De­cem­ber 27. He was 89.