Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley says more than one na­tion­al trib­ute should be be­stowed in mem­o­ry of this coun­try's first Pres­i­dent, Sir El­lis Clarke. Sir El­lis died on De­cem­ber 30 af­ter suf­fer­ing a mas­sive stroke on No­vem­ber 24. He will be buried fol­low­ing pri­vate and state fu­ner­als to­mor­row. His body lay in state at the ro­tun­da of the Red House yes­ter­day.

Hun­dreds of cit­i­zens viewed Sir El­lis' closed cas­ket and signed the con­do­lence book. Dr Row­ley said he would like to sug­gest that one of the trib­utes be in the field of learn­ing. "The Sir El­lis Clarke Cit­i­zens' Award would be the great­est trib­ute we could pay to him," the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader said. "He was a mod­el cit­i­zen," he added, Leader of Op­po­si­tion Busi­ness in the Sen­ate Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who al­so spoke with re­porters out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, said Sir El­lis walked with kings but al­so with the com­mon man.

She said Sir El­lis fit­ted the de­scrip­tion of a role mod­el and cit­i­zen of T&T. Beck­les-Robin­son said Sir El­lis should be ho­n­oured with a schol­ar­ship in his name. She said the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, which was writ­ten by Sir El­lis, "was sec­ond to none and has with­stood the scruti­ny of na­tions all over the world. That is go­ing to be his lega­cy and many peo­ple will nev­er be able to at­tain such a lega­cy." Dana See­ta­hal SC said Sir El­lis had "supreme in­tel­li­gence."

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Karl Hud­son-Phillips and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Overand Pad­more al­so joined the line of mourn­ers to pay their re­spects to the late Sir El­lis. Hud­son-Phillips, who is a judge at the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court, de­clined com­ment. Pad­more said Sir El­lis was ir­re­place­able. He said Sir El­lis was "a dis­tin­guished son of the soil, whose life was one of tremen­dous per­son­al achieve­ment and ser­vice to the coun­try." Pad­more said T&T was now rich­er for his ex­is­tence. (RL)