“The hap­pi­est time of my life, is when I am able to make a dif­fer­ence in some­one’s life. I live for those op­por­tu­ni­ties. They al­low me and those I help to ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of life even more.”

This was the quote that Matthew Pierre now car­ries with him, that was re­layed to him by the late Franklin Khan.

“He lived the life of help­ing peo­ple, try­ing to make im­pact on peo­ple’s lives in a pos­i­tive way,” said Pierre, who was Khan’s as­sis­tant dur­ing his stint as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Or­toire/Ma­yaro from 2002 to 2007.

He had won the seat on third at­tempt, af­ter los­ing to Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters twice pre­vi­ous­ly in the 2000 and 2001 Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

His time as MP changed a dy­nam­ic that had not been seen in the com­mu­ni­ty for some time ac­cord­ing to the Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy chair­man Clif­ford Camp­bell as the con­stituen­cy had a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area who still lived there.

“He would have brought back a sense of a res­i­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive be­cause in the past we would have suf­fered,” said Camp­bell di­rect­ly re­fer­ring to the tenures of Kei­th So­bion and Sel­wyn Richard­son, who both won the seat while not liv­ing in the area.

“Of course they had roots in the area but they weren’t ac­tu­al­ly liv­ing there. In Frankie’s case he even­tu­al­ly moved to Mo­ka but he had built a home here and he was of­ten here mov­ing around the com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

This abil­i­ty to re­late with the com­mon folk, was some­thing that even his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents ac­knowl­edged.

“As Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro, Franklin Khan at­tempt­ed to utilise his home-grown back­ground with his fa­mil­iar­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor to ser­vice the con­stituen­cy,” said Rush­ton Paray, the cur­rent Ma­yaro MP.

Paray how­ev­er felt de­spite his will­ing­ness to stay among the peo­ple of Ma­yaro, his du­ties per­haps did not al­low him to be around the con­stituen­cy enough.

“He re­mained a pleas­ant per­son but his city-based du­ties kept him away from the peo­ple he rep­re­sent­ed,” said the UNC MP, “Con­stituents will re­mem­ber him as easy-go­ing and friend­ly, but re­gret­ted that he was un­able to pro­vide the trans­for­ma­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion they had an­tic­i­pat­ed.”

The trans­for­ma­tions may not have hap­pened un­der Khan, but ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell, he was the cat­a­lyst for some the changes seen.

“As far as de­vel­op­men­tal, I know he would have pres­sured the oil com­pa­nies in the area, Na­tion­al En­er­gy in par­tic­u­lar with re­spect to the ad­vance­ment of Point Ga­le­o­ta, so I know that was one of his ini­tia­tives as well as the es­tab­lish­ment of the NEC trade school in Ma­yaro to the ben­e­fit of the lo­cal youths in the area who qual­i­fied and were able to go to that train­ing in­sti­tu­tion to ac­quire skills,” said Camp­bell, who point­ed to oth­er projects such as the com­ple­tion of the Fire Sta­tion in Ma­yaro in which Khan was very in­volved.

“Some of those planned projects may have come to fruition when he was not Min­is­ter of Works so he would not have got­ten the ku­dos,” he said.

Camp­bell not­ed that many of these plans were act­ed on af­ter Khan was prompt­ed to step down due to al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in pub­lic of­fice which sur­faced in 2005. Al­le­ga­tions which, he would lat­er be cleared of years lat­er.

Pierre and Camp­bell both re­called that dur­ing his time as Min­is­ter of Works, Khan em­barked on ex­ten­sive road im­prove­ment works in the area.

“There were a num­ber of road im­prove­ments projects, that would have stretched back in the day Or­toire Ma­yaro stretch­ing from Guaygua­yare to Moru­ga,” said Camp­bell, “So of course the en­tire con­stituen­cy there would have been road im­prove­ments al­beit not akin to a high­way but gen­er­al­ly im­prove­ments in the con­di­tion of road­ways and stuff. Es­pe­cial­ly in­to Moru­ga.”

Camp­bell al­so re­called Khan’s plans which would have trans­formed Ma­yaro to a tourism des­ti­na­tion sim­i­lar to Oistin’s, a fish­ing vil­lage in Bar­ba­dos which has be­come a pop­u­lar tourist at­trac­tion. Camp­bell lament­ed that this was on­ly now com­ing in­to be­ing with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Ducky’s and oth­er pri­vate en­ti­ties emerg­ing in the area.

An­oth­er long time po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent of Khan, Ma­yaro re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er said there were few lega­cy projects in Ma­yaro that can be di­rect­ly traced to Franklin Khan, but he did help a lot of peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“He would have helped plen­ty peo­ple in all dif­fer­ent ways, he would have help some peo­ple get jobs, he would have help peo­ple get hous­es, a lot of dif­fer­ent per­son­al things,” said Co­zi­er, who was Gyp­sy’s cam­paign man­ag­er in the ear­ly 2000 when Khan con­test­ed the Or­toire/Ma­yaro seat.

Pierre how­ev­er said Khan was far from an ab­sent MP, not­ing that he did his best to man­age a ma­jor Min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio along with a large con­stituen­cy.

“What I could say is that he serve his con­stituen­cy re­li­gious­ly. Or­toire/Ma­yaro is a con­stituen­cy that stretch from Ma­yaro Guaygua­yare straight in­to Moru­ga Bar­rack­pore. And every day of each week of the month, which is a Thurs­day. He had four of­fices one in Ma­yaro, one in Rio Claro, one in St Mary’s and one in Bas­seterre Moru­ga and he would go every Thurs­day to an of­fice to hear the con­cerns of the peo­ple,” he said. “He was not an MP who was miss­ing in ac­tion. Is­sues would range from hous­ing, peo­ple who want hous­ing. He is re­spon­si­ble for as­sist­ing a lot of peo­ple who got a house in Plai­sance in Ma­yaro.”

And even when he was not in of­fice, he could be ap­proached by peo­ple in the street, Pierre said.

“He was ap­proach­able to any­body could have come to him and dur­ing the pe­ri­od you would al­ways see him in Ma­yaro mov­ing around in a short pants walk­ing around talk­ing to peo­ple, the nor­mal peo­ple or ca­su­al peo­ple on the street,” said Pierre, who hav­ing served as coun­cil­lor for 14 years is cur­rent­ly a Com­mu­ni­ty Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer for BPTT.

Khan’s sud­den death may have once again de­nied him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see a lega­cy project in Ma­yaro di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to him come to fruition.

“The Quick Shoppe in Ma­yaro, the NP, the Gas sta­tion which is 24 hours that is close to com­ple­tion he would have opened that,” said Pierre, “he turned the sod and he would have been di­rect­ly in­stru­men­tal even though he was not the MP as the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy he saw the need be­cause of Ma­yaro be­ing a des­ti­na­tion for lo­cal tourism and he saw the need, we have one gas sta­tion here and he saw the need to bring that gas sta­tion to Ma­yaro.”

“I would say is some­thing that is su­per crit­i­cal and cru­cial to tourism and peo­ple to Ma­yaro to be part of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty and tourism in­dus­try that he en­sure in his lat­ter days here that that came to Ma­yaro,” Pierre said.