Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

For near­ly four decades—37 years to be ex­act—Clerk of the House Jacqui Samp­son Meiguel guid­ed dozens of this coun­try’s most pop­u­lar par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and per­haps even more less­er known ones through the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures of the T&T Par­lia­ment.

She has stood next to four prime min­is­ters as they took their oath of of­fice, and served un­der Speak­ers Oc­c­ah Seep­aul, Hec­tor Mc­Clean, Ru­pert Grif­fith, Baren­dra Sinanan Wade Mark and now Bridgid An­nisette-George. Nizam Mo­hammed was Speak­er when she first en­tered Par­lia­ment, be­fore be­com­ing Clerk.

She would al­so have over­seen the task of mov­ing the Par­lia­ment out of the Red House to the Wa­ter­front Com­plex and then back to the Red House on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

She has pro­ceed­ed on pre-re­tire­ment leave, which will cul­mi­nate with her full re­tire­ment at the end of Jan­u­ary next year.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House, Arou­ca Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son Reg­is, in pay­ing trib­ute, said Samp­son-Meiguel was the epit­o­me of the high­est re­gard for pub­lic ser­vice and re­mained “a steady light in a space that can some­times be tu­mul­tuous.” Robin­son-Reg­is added that Samp­son-Meiguel al­so act­ed as the “bridge that was need­ed in good times as well as bad.”

“Mrs Samp­son-Meiguel has demon­strat­ed her love for this hal­lowed in­sti­tu­tion and all it stands for,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

“She has demon­strat­ed in­tegri­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tion of and com­mit­ment to the peo­ple. This is a woman whom I have come to know and re­spect, a hum­ble ad­vo­cate for what is right, a woman of hon­esty and de­cen­cy.”

Speak­ing for the Op­po­si­tion, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said it will be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the par­lia­men­tary fam­i­ly with­out her.

“She was ex­treme­ly hard­work­ing and ded­i­cat­ed and pro­fes­sion­al and had at her heart, the in­ter­ests of Par­lia­ment, and al­ways had this vi­sion of where the par­lia­ment should go.

“And it was note­wor­thy that Jacqui Samp­son Meiguel al­so trained sev­er­al peo­ple through­out the years who con­tin­ue that vi­sion,” Mooni­lal said.

Bri­an Cae­sar, pre­vi­ous­ly Clerk of the Sen­ate (act­ing), has been ap­point­ed as the sub­stan­tive Clerk of the House with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 9.