Sean Nero

Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing is con­vinced that if there was ever a time that this coun­try need­ed the guid­ance of the late prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, it is now.He said the racial ten­sion stirred by con­tro­ver­sial state­ments made by Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed about an eth­nic im­bal­ance in the hi­er­ar­chy of the Po­lice Ser­vice ex­ec­u­tive just over a week ago, could hurt this coun­try's so­cial fab­ric and called on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to re­flect and learn from the late prime min­is­ter's teach­ings on racial har­mo­ny.In de­liv­er­ing trib­ute to Dr Williams at the 30th an­niver­sary wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny of his pass­ing at the Mil­i­tary he­li­port in Ch­aguara­mas, Lee Sing said: "All of us who have been fol­low­ing the news in the last week or two would agree that the coun­try has tak­en on a di­vide, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­lates to the state­ments made by the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Mr Nizam Mo­hammed.

"Dr Williams, through­out his life, sought to bring the races and the na­tion to­geth­er and when he specif­i­cal­ly spoke about there can be no moth­er In­dia, no moth­er Africa, he was al­lud­ing to the fact that there could be on­ly one moth­er; moth­er Trinidad and To­ba­go."He said the lega­cy of Dr Williams re­mained last­ing and that his teach­ings re­quired no pro­mo­tion and ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns.But Regi­nald Vi­dale, chair­man of the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, called on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to of­fi­cial­ly de­clare the first Sat­ur­day of April, Dr Er­ic Williams Re­mem­brance Day, to tru­ly pre­serve his lega­cy.

$100,000 to host­memo­r­i­al func­tion

Ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing that in­clud­ed Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Joan Yuille- Williams, deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, and a for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or, Ethel­bert Paul and mem­bers of the Diplo­mat­ic Corps, he said it need not be a hol­i­day, but a day to com­mem­o­rate and re­flect on the life of the man com­mon­ly re­ferred to as the "Fa­ther of the Na­tion."Vi­dale ex­pressed doubt about host­ing the event in the fu­ture.He had many chal­lenges putting on the ob­ser­vance an­nu­al­ly and want­ed the State to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pre­serv­ing Dr Williams' lega­cy.

"It's be­com­ing a lit­tle more oner­ous to have this. The spon­sor­ship is hard in com­ing by and of course there are not many peo­ple who are as com­mit­ted as I am to this and there are those who are as com­mit­ted as I am."It can be big­ger and if it has to be the way that I would re­al­ly want it to be, it would take any­thing close to $100,000. And, I'm get­ting old­er and the task is get­ting hard­er and hard­er, be­cause it's get­ting big­ger and big­ger. If it can't be tak­en over by the State, then cer­tain­ly, I'm not too sure I'll be able to con­tin­ue with it be­cause of the enor­mous amount (of mon­ey) which needs to be put in to hav­ing this. So, it is for that rea­son that I'm con­tem­plat­ing it," he said.