Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona wants the state to be­stow the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT) to Bas­deo Pan­day posthu­mous­ly, an ho­n­our Pan­day did not ac­cept in 2014.

Speak­ing at re­mem­brance cer­e­mo­ny for the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter at his Al­ma Ma­ta, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do, on Thurs­day night, Car­mona said, “I wish that the au­thor­i­ties con­sid­er hav­ing the fam­i­ly re­ceive on be­half of the for­mer PM, the ORTT posthu­mous­ly. And that he be giv­en his just due for his con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s de­vel­op­ment so that he can be ad­dressed at the fu­ner­al as for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day ORTT.”

Car­mona said it would be a fit­ting trib­ute to a gen­er­al who con­sid­ered him­self a proac­tive sol­dier in the face of so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal re­form, de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment.

How­ev­er, the for­mer pres­i­dent did ad­dress the fact that Pan­day was of­fered the award in 2014 by then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. In Au­gust of that year, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had an­nounced that both Patrick Man­ning and Pan­day would be ho­n­oured with the ORTT for serv­ing the coun­try with dis­tinc­tion. For­mer prime min­is­ter Man­ning de­clined cit­ing a tu­mul­tuous re­la­tion­ship with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whom he said at­tacked his char­ac­ter. Pan­day, mean­while, was out of the coun­try on va­ca­tion and re­port­ed­ly nev­er re­spond­ed to the of­fer.

But Car­mona, who was pres­i­dent at that time, told mourn­ers at the school’s com­pound, “Bas­deo Pan­day nev­er of­fi­cial­ly re­ject­ed the ORTT. He nev­er con­tact­ed me as pres­i­dent on the is­sue and nev­er wrote to me of­fi­cial­ly as pres­i­dent.”

He added, “There were all kinds of com­ments on this is­sue in the press, but noth­ing was of­fi­cial­ly re­layed to me by Pan­day.”

Car­mona said the top­ic be­came a source of ban­ter be­tween the two when they met at so­cial events.

“I would say Bas, when are you com­ing to col­lect the peo­ple thing boy? And then I would go of­fi­cial and say Mr Pan­day, de­lay and omis­sion do not con­sti­tute or add up to be­ing a re­jec­tion of the ORTT. He would then laugh and say ‘that is why you were a judge, the way you’re see­ing things’, and we would both end up laugh­ing,” Car­mona told the au­di­ence.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pan­day’s daugh­ter Mick­ela yes­ter­day, and asked if the fam­i­ly would be will­ing to ac­cept the award if of­fered.

Via text mes­sage, Mick­ela re­spond­ed, “Now that my dad is no longer with us, I will leave that de­ci­sion to the peo­ple of his beloved Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Con­tin­u­ing his anec­dotes about Pan­day, Car­mona warned that some were quite risqué. He re­count­ed one time when Pan­day went to a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine and said his pres­ence there was re­quired be­cause the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment had a re­al chance of los­ing the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy. He said Pan­day told the crowd that the PNM was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ‘jari­ah’, a term the crowd was not fa­mil­iar with.

“And in his mas­ter­ful or­a­tor­i­cal and rhetor­i­cal style, he blurt­ed out ‘al­lyuh want to know what jari­ah is? Well, that is when you fright­en and your bam­sy go­ing so,’” he said, mak­ing a ges­ture where his hand opened and closed like con­trac­tions.

Mean­while, the son of ar­guably Pan­day’s biggest po­lit­i­cal ri­val al­so spoke at the cer­e­mo­ny. Bri­an Man­ning said he could not help but look at Pan­day with to­tal ad­mi­ra­tion, even when his fa­ther was on the re­ceiv­ing end of his wit.

Man­ning re­called one par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal meet­ing where Pan­day said, “‘When you lose three times you call it a hat-trick, af­ter next elec­tion when I beat Man­ning for the third time, when you lose three times, you’ll call it a Patrick’.”

“This man is try­ing to end my fa­ther’s po­lit­i­cal ca­reer and I am the one laugh­ing hard­er than any­one else,” Man­ning said.