Yvonne Ba­boolal

An un­usu­al­ly lengthy trib­ute was paid to de­ceased MP Ken Val­ley, in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment be­cause he was a son of the sug­ar belt, Sub­has Pan­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, said. He said Val­ley had all the warmth of peo­ple from the sug­ar belt.

De­scrib­ing Val­ley's Par­lia­ment char­ac­ter, he said, as an MP, he had the killer in­stinct and went for the jugu­lar of any­one who came up against him. Pan­day said Val­ley was al­so a man of vi­sion who could have seen a dic­ta­tor around the cor­ner.

Al­lud­ing to Val­ley's fall­out with for­mer PNM po­lit­i­cal leader, Patrick Man­ning, Pan­day added, "In 2007, he said it was time to re­move him (Man­ning)." Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion's trib­ute, said Val­ley, one of the first PNM Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors to be ap­point­ed in 1986, played a piv­otal role in the re­new­al of the par­ty. She al­so laud­ed his con­tri­bu­tion to the re­vival of the econ­o­my and the Cari­com Free Trade Agree­ment. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Basharat Ali said he knew Val­ley for 30 years. He said they met when Val­ley was a pub­lic of­fi­cer in the Min­istry of Fi­nance in 1981 and he was em­ployed at the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC).

Ali said he was im­pressed by Val­ley's per­for­mance in the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na, re­call­ing that the for­mer min­is­ter helped raise $US50 mil­lion for T&T for methanol on the Lon­don mar­ket. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith said he knew Val­ley in the field of in­sur­ance. He said Val­ley was a most af­fa­ble char­ac­ter to deal with but was al­so a most forth­right man who stood by his con­vic­tions. Hamel-Smith said Val­ley would go down in the his­to­ry of Par­lia­ment as an icon to be re­mem­bered. Val­ley died of colon can­cer at age 63 last Fri­day. He will be cre­mat­ed to­day at the Long Cir­cu­lar cre­ma­to­ri­um af­ter a 1 pm ser­vice at the Fin­bar Ryan Church in Diego Mar­tin.