AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

The life and lega­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sec­ond Prime Min­is­ter are fi­nal­ly be­ing memo­ri­alised for all to re­mem­ber.

Yes­ter­day marked 25 years since George Michael Cham­bers’ pass­ing.

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of his life, the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (Nalis) has launched the George Cham­bers Com­mem­o­ra­tive Ex­hi­bi­tion, spear­head­ed by the Her­itage Li­brary Di­vi­sion, Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing at the launch Thurs­day evening, Nalis chair­man Neil Parsan­lal said that while oth­er state lead­ers and politi­cians have been memo­ri­alised in great length, up un­til now, there hasn’t been any ‘sim­i­lar treat­ment’ of the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter.

“It is clear that the great­est ob­sta­cle to the ap­pre­ci­a­tion and adop­tion of he­roes in our so­ci­ety is our own per­va­sive and cor­ro­sive cyn­i­cism and scep­ti­cism. Large­ly be­cause we have con­flat­ed ex­cel­lence with per­fec­tion. We pull down our he­roes from their pedestals at their slight­est er­ror in judge­ment,” Parsan­lal said.

With items do­nat­ed by Cham­bers’ daugh­ter, An­drea, the ex­hi­bi­tion con­sists of a full col­lec­tion of over 700 books, pho­tographs and oth­er ob­jects from the Prime Min­is­ter’s per­son­al pos­ses­sion to show­case who he was as a per­son.

A sur­prise to many has been his wide col­lec­tion of match­box­es from the many coun­tries he vis­it­ed on dis­play.

Many trib­utes were made at the event, with com­mon ref­er­ences be­ing made to him be­ing ‘re­mark­able’ and con­sid­ered ‘the most un­der­rat­ed po­lit­i­cal leader.

In an en­ter­tain­ing spo­ken word piece, Her­itage Na­tion­al Li­brary di­rec­tor, Jas­mine Sim­mons, re­ferred to the for­mer St Ann’s East MP as an in­spi­ra­tion to many.

“Many doubt­ed his abil­i­ty. In the foot­steps of Dr Williams, some even thought he not wor­thy…Did you know that one of his recre­ations was record play­ing? From Pavarot­ti to sweet pan, I can see him un­wind­ing. Un­wind­ing to take away the sting of the me­dia and those that de­clared him ‘dun­cy for­ev­er.’ De­spite what any­one dares to say, Mr Cham­bers did it his own way,” Sim­mons said.

The ex­hi­bi­tion re­flects no­table ac­com­plish­ments by Cham­bers such as his procla­ma­tion of Au­gust 1st as a pub­lic hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, his de­c­la­ra­tion of the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route for use by hired ve­hi­cles and his re­fusal to sup­port the US-led in­va­sion of Grena­da while main­tain­ing diplo­ma­cy.

The ex­hi­bi­tion is free and will end on No­vem­ber 18, 2022.