DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

His­to­ri­ans, politi­cians, and an­a­lysts have strong­ly re­ject­ed claims by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Dr Kirk Meighoo that Dr Er­ic Williams was not T&T’s first prime min­is­ter.

On the na­tion’s 63rd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, Meighoo ar­gued that the sto­ry of T&T’s in­de­pen­dence had been dis­tort­ed by what he called “PNM myths,” claim­ing that Williams was mere­ly the Pre­mier of T&T with­in the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion, which ex­ist­ed from 1958 to 1962, while Bar­ba­di­an Sir Grant­ley Adams served as its Prime Min­is­ter.

“Er­ic Williams was not the fa­ther of the na­tion, nor the bea­con of Caribbean uni­ty that the PNM have made him out to be. They (PNM) use these myths to dis­tort present pol­i­tics as well,” Meighoo wrote on Face­book.

He not­ed that the Fed­er­a­tion, which con­sist­ed of ten provinces—An­tigua (with Bar­bu­da), Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Ja­maica (with the Cay­man Is­lands and the Turks & Caicos Is­lands), Montser­rat, St Christo­pher-Nevis-An­guil­la, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, and T&T—had a flag, a par­lia­ment, a prime min­is­ter, elec­tions, a cur­ren­cy, and a con­sti­tu­tion. T&T was sup­posed to be­come in­de­pen­dent as part of the Fed­er­a­tion but ul­ti­mate­ly pulled out, lead­ing to its col­lapse.

The re­marks, how­ev­er, drew sharp re­spons­es across the po­lit­i­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic land­scape.

His­to­ri­an Prof Claudius Fer­gus quick­ly re­ject­ed Meighoo’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion, as­sert­ing that T&T was a colony with­in the Fed­er­a­tion.

“You can twist this thing around in se­man­tics and all kinds of stuff to come up with ar­gu­ments that suit your po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy or the job of PR, if you think that the job of PR is to dis­cred­it Williams. But the facts are the facts. Trinidad and To­ba­go was an in­de­pen­dent coun­try on­ly in 1962. And there­fore, the first Prime Min­is­ter of in­de­pen­dent Trinidad and To­ba­go was Er­ic Williams,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed al­so ques­tioned the rel­e­vance of Meighoo’s ar­gu­ment, warn­ing that he is still stuck in op­po­si­tion and “em­bar­rass­ing him­self.” He said his­to­ry al­ready ac­knowl­edges the facts that Dr Williams was the first PM of an in­de­pen­dent T&T.

“My ques­tion is, you are say­ing all of this, and what? Have you put for­ward a pol­i­cy, a sug­ges­tion, a rec­om­men­da­tion, some­thing for con­sid­er­a­tion as to how we move the coun­try for­ward in all of what you said? My an­swer to that is ‘no’. So, ease me up with the garbage on the first of Sep­tem­ber,” Mo­hammed said.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young la­belled Meighoo’s com­ments “dan­ger­ous” and “dis­hon­est,” call­ing them an in­ten­tion­al at­tempt to rewrite the na­tion’s his­to­ry in a Face­book re­sponse.

“Meighoo has sub­mit­ted the pre­pos­ter­ous ar­gu­ment that be­cause there was a West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion pri­or to Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­tain­ing its in­de­pen­dence in 1962, Dr Er­ic Williams was not our coun­try’s first Prime Min­is­ter,” he said. Young fur­ther chal­lenged the “pro­pa­gan­da” about the PNM, in­sist­ing that it was dis­re­spect­ful and should be re­ject­ed.

His­to­ri­an and for­mer PNM min­is­ter Dr Lovell Fran­cis dis­missed Meighoo’s re­marks as “pseu­do-aca­d­e­m­ic lan­guage” de­signed to con­fuse cit­i­zens.

“There is a big­ger game at play here, which is a long-stand­ing at­tempt to un­der­mine the role of Dr Williams and the PNM in our in­de­pen­dence nar­ra­tive … when that kind of nar­row po­lit­i­cal mis­chief mak­ing comes couched in pseu­do-aca­d­e­m­ic lan­guage, where­in cit­i­zens might mis­take it for words wor­thy of se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, we might start hav­ing a prob­lem,” he said.

Fran­cis as­sert­ed that while the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion ex­ist­ed briefly, Williams be­came Pre­mier of T&T in 1956 and went on to be­come the undis­put­ed first prime min­is­ter in 1962.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so weighed in, shar­ing a post by jour­nal­ist and Guardian Me­dia colum­nist Tony Fras­er, who de­scribed Meighoo’s claims as an in­sid­i­ous at­tempt to un­der­mine Williams’ rep­u­ta­tion. Fras­er said the ef­fort sought to de­ny Williams, his par­ty, and gov­ern­ment of their con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al life, fram­ing it as “an at­tempt to rewrite his­to­ry and to de­stroy com­plete­ly the rep­u­ta­tion of an in­di­vid­ual who can­not re­spond.”

He added that while po­lit­i­cal par­ties are en­ti­tled to crit­i­cise their op­po­nents, Meighoo’s in­ter­ven­tion went be­yond that, amount­ing to a dis­tor­tion of the his­tor­i­cal record.

“It’s a means of deny­ing him, the par­ty and gov­ern­ment he led of their ef­forts at gov­ern­ing in the in­ter­est of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Fras­er ar­gued. “The ob­jec­tive [is] to elim­i­nate Williams’ lead­er­ship and rep­u­ta­tion in the quest to place the par­ty he led in the po­si­tion of be­ing un­able to ut­ter a word in sup­port of the ef­forts of Williams as prime min­is­ter.” Fras­er warned that po­lit­i­cal at­tacks risk eras­ing his­tor­i­cal truth.

“Whether you are a sup­port­er or not of the PNM, the need is to be aware of what is be­ing at­tempt­ed … raise a voice, a fin­ger, a pen against such dis­tor­tion,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed by telling Guardian Me­dia that the mat­ter was a non-is­sue, say­ing there are more press­ing con­cerns for the coun­try to ad­dress.