Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A roy­al “send-off” from the heart of her con­stituen­cy.

The fu­ner­al of late for­mer PNM MP and Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald will be held to­mor­row morn­ing at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port-of-Spain fol­lowed by bur­ial at the West­ern Ceme­tery, in St James.

This was con­firmed by mem­bers of Mc­Don­ald’s for­mer PNM Port-of-Spain South con­stituen­cy who not­ed that both the church and ceme­tery are lo­cat­ed with­in Mc­Don­ald’s for­mer con­stituen­cy.

Mc­Don­ald died last Fri­day at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre. She had been ail­ing for some time. She had been a PNM MP and Min­is­ter from 2007 to 2019 span­ning the Patrick Man­ning and Dr Kei­th Row­ley PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions. Serv­ing as Op­po­si­tion chief whip over the years 2010 to 2015, Mc­Don­ald was al­so part of PNM’s “back­bone” re­tool­ing the Op­po­si­tion of­fice and par­ty at that time when the PNM was in Op­po­si­tion.

To­mor­row’s ser­vice will be­gin at 10 am. There is ex­pect­ed to be full at­ten­dance by PNM top brass- in­clud­ing the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley and mem­bers of oth­er par­ty units as well as Port-of-Spain South mem­bers. Al­so ex­pect­ed to at­tend are Op­po­si­tion MPs. Fol­low­ing the ser­vice, Mc­Don­ald will be buried at the West­ern Ceme­tery.

Last night, Mc­Don­ald’s Port-of-Spain South unit cul­mi­nat­ed three days of events mark­ing her pass­ing, with a memo­r­i­al ser­vice at City Hall in the cap­i­tal city.

Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said the PNM’s lead­er­ship, Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­bers and oth­ers were in­vit­ed. Ad­dress­es were sched­uled by Port-of-Spain coun­cil­lors and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, PNM of­fi­cials Irene Hinds, Jen­nifer Bap­tis­tePrimus, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne (who was deputy co­or­di­na­tor with Mc­Don­ald the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions polls), PNM chair­man Stu­art Young, Women’s League head Camille Robin­son- Reg­is and PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings.

On Tues­day, con­stituents lit up one ded­i­cat­ed street from each of the nine elec­toral dis­tricts in the con­stituen­cy in ob­ser­vance of Mc­Don­ald’s work. A con­do­lence reg­is­ter was opened on Mon­day.

This year, Mc­Don­ald had re­sumed du­ties with the Port-of-Spain South unit in­clud­ing be­ing in­stru­men­tal in or­gan­is­ing its Car­ni­val ca­lyp­so show. She had al­so co-or­di­nat­ed the PNM’s Port-of-Spain cam­paign for the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls. The PNM re­tained all 12 seats in that dis­trict. Mc­Don­ald’s im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing two broth­ers, a sis­ter, and two nieces, are in the coun­try.