Ken­neth Val­ley, 63, lost his bat­tle with colon can­cer on Fri­day at his Glen­coe home. In the wake of his pass­ing, com­men­da­tions have come from all of his col­leagues in Par­lia­ment and most com­pelling­ly, from those who might have been con­sid­ered his po­lit­i­cal neme­ses. If a man is mea­sured by both the qual­i­ty of his friends and the re­spect of his op­po­nents, then Val­ley, who came to pol­i­tics in 1987 af­ter the 33-3 de­feat of the PNM in 1986 as an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor, was a politi­cian of sig­nif­i­cant scale. "Ken­neth Val­ley was a no­tably wor­thy man," Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on his pass­ing, de­scrib­ing him as "frank and fear­less." "He al­ways kept his word and was ex­treme­ly hon­est," said Deputy Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Dr Fuad Khan. "He was very ar­tic­u­late in Par­lia­ment and very force­ful," said for­mer UNC Leader Bas­deo Pan­day who sat on the op­po­site side of the bench­es from Val­ley through­out his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. "What­ev­er he did, he al­ways did it well. He will be missed."

Even Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, with whom he had a fa­mous par­lia­men­tary clash in 1995, one that led to the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency to re­solve the cri­sis in the house, de­clared her­self a good friend of the late politi­cian af­ter that shock­ing episode in po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry. Ken Val­ley's po­lit­i­cal ca­reer ef­fec­tive­ly came to an end in 2007, when he was not se­lect­ed to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tions that year. The dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween the sit­ting Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning on­ly drib­bled in­to the pub­lic do­main dur­ing that con­tentious time, but Man­ning spared no praise for the man who once served as Min­is­ter in sev­er­al min­istries un­der his lead­er­ship, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. Man­ning cred­it­ed Val­ley as the "au­thor of the eco­nom­ic poli­cies that the PNM adopt­ed in 1987 and which we sus­tained fun­da­men­tal­ly un­til 2010." The for­mer Prime Min­is­ter al­so salut­ed Val­ley as a fo­cal point for the re­turn of ur­ban mid­dle-class pro­fes­sion­als and busi­ness peo­ple to the PNM.

Dr Amery Browne, among many oth­er Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, re­called Ken­neth Val­ley as a man who shared ad­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling for Browne, who was put in the un­com­fort­able po­si­tion of con­test­ing the vet­er­an politi­cian's seat in 2007. Val­ley gen­er­ous­ly pre­sent­ed Browne to the con­stituen­cy, an­nounc­ing to the crowd that the PNM torch had been passed to the young politi­cian. Ken Val­ley was a ro­bust and gen­er­ous politi­cian to his peers in Par­lia­ment, but he was al­so a valu­able re­source to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as a cham­pi­on of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion from the oil and gas sec­tors and in pur­su­ing trade and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and emerg­ing mar­kets with­in the Caribbean re­gion and be­yond. The TTMA recog­nised Val­ley as an Hon­orary Mem­ber in trib­ute to his sup­port of the an­nu­al Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion, where the as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that "he played an in­stru­men­tal role in or­ches­trat­ing key de­vel­op­ments re­gard­ing in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion."

Af­ter leav­ing ac­tive pol­i­tics, Val­ley found­ed KCV Con­sult­ing Ser­vices, which was his plat­form to con­tin­u­ous­ly cham­pi­on and en­gage ini­tia­tives to bridge the in­for­ma­tion and trade di­vide be­tween the Caribbean and Latin and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, which he viewed as the next fron­tier for this coun­try's busi­ness plans for ex­pan­sion and en­gage­ment.

The late Ken­neth Val­ley leaves large shoes and a re­mark­able rep­u­ta­tion for his col­leagues in pub­lic ser­vice to meet as a bench­mark for per­for­mance in the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Val­ley's con­sid­er­able savvy and a sound knowl­edge of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure were ev­i­dent over the ten years he served as Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness and an­oth­er six years spent as Chief Op­po­si­tion Whip in the ser­vice of the PNM.

In a state­ment on Val­ley's pass­ing, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed the late politi­cian as "a trust­ed friend and re­li­able col­league." That's the pre­vail­ing sense of Ken­neth Val­ley's lega­cy as a politi­cian; sen­si­ble and de­lib­er­ate lead­er­ship with a con­stant eye on im­prov­ing the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a bet­ter na­tion for the ef­forts of Ken­neth Val­ley as a politi­cian, busi­ness­man, busi­ness ad­vo­cate and cit­i­zen and his fam­i­ly's loss is shared by us and all who ap­pre­ci­ate such no­table per­son­al sac­ri­fice in the ser­vice of the na­tion­al good.