Prof Hamid Ghany

The re­cent serv­ing of court doc­u­ments re­gard­ing the con­struc­tion of the new Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s head­quar­ters un­der leg­is­la­tion passed in 2019 re­lat­ed to the ex­pla­na­tion of wealth has put Bal­isi­er House in the spot­light.

The vi­sion of Dr Er­ic Williams for a PNM par­ty head­quar­ters was re­port­ed in The Na­tion news­pa­per of Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 5, 1962, in a col­umn writ­ten by then Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the PNM, Nicholas Si­mon­ette, as fol­lows:

“This week I wish to re­fresh the minds of par­ty mem­bers on the ideas which cir­cu­lat­ed in the Par­ty when the de­ci­sion to ac­quire a par­ty head­quar­ters was first tak­en.

“Here is what the Po­lit­i­cal Leader said in his ad­dress to the Third An­nu­al Con­ven­tion on Oc­to­ber 17, 1958: ‘This is what we have to do. We have to build our par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion from the bot­tom up. We have to re­or­gan­ise our sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion so that, through the Par­ty, it pen­e­trates in­to the deep­est mass­es of the peo­ple. We have to re­or­gan­ise our press on the same scale. The whole con­sti­tutes what we have to look up­on as the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme of the Par­ty, which in­volves above all the fi­nanc­ing of these vast projects. The first es­sen­tial is a Par­ty Head­quar­ters…” (p 5).

Ac­cord­ing to The Na­tion for Fri­day, April 26, 1963, un­der the head­line “Gold­en Key to Bal­isi­er House”, the fol­low­ing was re­port­ed:

“Dr Williams said: We had been look­ing for­ward to this great day for many years, and what we will see to­day as we en­ter the build­ing…we would un­der­stand is the work of many peo­ple, many con­trib­u­tors, drawn from all walks of life in the coun­try, drawn from all lev­els of our na­tion­al par­ty. The idea of a Par­ty Head­quar­ters is at least five or six years old. But for the first time in 1961, dur­ing the elec­tions, we launched the cam­paign for funds through­out the coun­try…and it be­came pos­si­ble to en­vis­age the re­al­i­sa­tion of the dream. The ap­peal fund was large­ly un­der the con­trol of the Do­na­tions Com­mit­tee with the Po­lit­i­cal Leader as Chair­man…” (p 6).

The 1961 gen­er­al elec­tion was used to raise funds. This strat­e­gy was cou­pled with the sup­port of oth­er per­sons who were piv­otal to mak­ing Bal­isi­er House a re­al­i­ty.

The Na­tion went fur­ther to re­port on Dr Williams, say­ing the fol­low­ing:

“I be­lieve that to­day I ought to draw at­ten­tion to the work of three mem­bers of the par­ty…work which has re­sult­ed in the es­tab­lish­ment of the Head­quar­ters. The first, Par­ty Chair­man, Sir Learie Con­stan­tine…The sec­ond mem­ber of the Par­ty whose ser­vices I would like to place on record is Mr John O’Hal­lo­ran…The third mem­ber re­spon­si­ble for our pres­ence to­day is Mr Al­fre­do Bermudez…”

The con­clu­sion of Dr Williams’ ad­dress was re­port­ed as fol­lows:

“We were in rent­ed premis­es. This is our own lo­cal habi­ta­tion; there­fore, I give it a name. I name this Par­ty Head­quar­ters Bal­isi­er House.”

Fast for­ward to the re­open­ing of the re­fur­bished Bal­isi­er House in late Jan­u­ary 2024. Ac­cord­ing to for­mer Guardian re­porter Rhon­dor Dowlat, who cov­ered that event for Guardian Me­dia in a re­port on Jan­u­ary 29, 2024:

“Bal­isi­er House was re­opened in fine style with the un­veil­ing of a plaque and place­ment of a time cap­sule. Asked what was the over­all cost of such a lav­ish re­fur­bish­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who ad­dressed mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a tour of his styl­ish ex­ec­u­tive of­fice, said al­though there was a bud­get, they had sur­passed it for the fin­ish­ing touch­es. He said the cost would be re­vealed at the PNM’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 24.

It’s not cheap. I don’t have a fig­ure yet, even­tu­al­ly, those who han­dled the fig­ures would re­port to the gen­er­al coun­cil, but I don’t have an idea of the fig­ure be­cause it is some­thing we have been work­ing on for a long time and the re­ports have not come in yet. We had planned to open this build­ing last year af­ter the COVID dis­rup­tions. We got some set­backs and we kept hav­ing to read­just our po­si­tion, but in terms of how we were able to do it, I can tell you we start­ed with some small do­na­tions from par­ty mem­bers and reg­u­lar bene­fac­tors, but that could not have re­al­ly pushed a bud­get of the scale and, of course, we did at the same time, we had the new build­ing go­ing up next door but we kept sep­a­rate ac­counts. The ac­counts that did this ren­o­va­tion are not mixed with the one over there. This one is an ac­count that goes back about 12 years, he added.”

All of this will be re­port­ed on as a con­se­quence of the re­quest for ac­counts from the High Court.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.

He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.