Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“Thank you, thank you, thank you all T&T... for the out­pour of love!”

That was the heart­felt de­c­la­ra­tion to T&T from Mick­ela Pan­day, daugh­ter of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day yes­ter­day, as she spoke at the Red House Par­lia­ment com­plex, where a long line of peo­ple had queued up to pay their re­spects and view her late fa­ther’s body.

And Pan­day—who was re­sound­ing­ly hugged by po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Chris­tine “Twig­gy” Livia—said her fa­ther wouldn’t have want­ed the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port or any­thing named af­ter him, but would rather have want­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form if any­thing.

Pan­day, 90, died last Mon­day in Flori­da, where he had been re­ceiv­ing med­ical at­ten­tion. He was air­lift­ed there on De­cem­ber 12. His body was brought home on Wednes­day.

Pan­day’s body lay in state at the Par­lia­ment’s Ro­tun­da gallery from 10 am yes­ter­day to 5 pm. At 8.45 am, it was borne by mil­i­tary gun car­riage with uni­formed es­corts from Broad­way, South Quay, to the Par­lia­ment’s Aber­crom­by Street en­trance with full mil­i­tary ho­n­ours.

Pan­day’s body will al­so lie in state for pub­lic view­ing at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) on Mon­day from 9 am to 5 pm. His fu­ner­al is 8.30 am Tues­day at SAPA.

Mick­ela Pan­day and her sib­lings ar­rived at the Par­lia­ment soon af­ter Pan­day’s cof­fin was borne in­to the Ro­tun­da. Pan­day’s dri­ver of 22 years, Roodan Ram­per­sad, drove their SUV.

Al­so as­sist­ing Ms Pan­day was for­mer UNC Min­is­ter Car­los John. They were greet­ed by deputy House Speak­er Es­mond Forde, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Nigel De Fre­itas and For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne.

Af­ter meet­ings, the group emerged ahead of the 10.30 am ar­rival time of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and went to the Ro­tun­da, where Pan­day’s cas­ket was lo­cat­ed. Kan­ga­loo, who ar­rived with her hus­band, First Gen­tle­man Ker­wyn Gar­cia, stood be­fore the cof­fin, then went over to speak with the Pan­day group.

Kan­ga­loo and Mick­ela em­braced warm­ly—as did Gar­cia and Ms Pan­day. Kan­ga­loo and Ms Pan­day stood in an­i­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion while Gar­cia signed the con­do­lence book. Kan­ga­loo and Gar­cia then left.

The Pan­day en­tourage de­part­ed the Ro­tun­da at 11 am, head­ing to speak with the long line of peo­ple queued up in the hot sun await­ing their turn to en­ter the Ro­tun­da.

As Mick­ela left, she passed a pic­ture of Pan­day on the ta­ble where the con­do­lence book lay, and she reached out to gen­tly touch her dad’s pho­to.

Out­side of the Par­lia­ment, Pan­day re­peat­ed­ly thanked all who came out, the pub­lic in gen­er­al, Gov­ern­ment and me­dia.

Ex­press­ing thanks for the out­pour­ing of love, she added, “Peo­ple say when peo­ple send love to you, you feel stronger. We’ve got­ten strength from the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go—the fam­i­ly, me. It’s un­be­liev­able. How do we be­gin to say thank you. So we say thank you on be­half of our dad as well,”

Ms Pan­day dis­agreed with views that her fa­ther didn’t get the same kind of recog­ni­tion in life as he did in death.

“Noooo, I think, he got great recog­ni­tion and love while he was alive and he’s just get­ting even more now, which I didn’t think was even pos­si­ble. So no, he re­ceived love when he was alive com­plete­ly. And even more so now and again, I can’t stop say­ing thank you so very much to the peo­ple of T&T, north south, east west!”

“Thank you to every­body—the me­dia, the Par­lia­ment, the Gov­ern­ment has been ex­treme­ly help­ful. Every­body came to­geth­er and made sure of uni­ty in this coun­try. I wish he was here to see it.”

As she walked along talk­ing to peo­ple, Twig­gy, who was on the op­po­site side of the road, came over and en­veloped Pan­day in a huge hug.

Oma “strug­gling a lit­tle bit”

Pan­day said her old­er sis­ter (Niala) will be com­ing to T&T soon. At the Par­lia­ment with her were oth­er sib­lings, in­clud­ing one who is in the De­fence Force and sis­ter Vasta­la’s hus­band Dan­ny Tar­low.

Pan­day said the fam­i­ly was “cop­ing”.

“Mom is strug­gling a lit­tle bit, but we’ve had love and sup­port, so thank you. She’ll get there, one step at a time.”

On whether her fa­ther should be ho­n­oured by hav­ing the Pi­ar­co Air­port named af­ter him, Mick­ela said, “You know I tried to think of what he’d say if he was here and he’d say, ‘What you nam­ing any­thing af­ter me for? Don’t name any­thing af­ter me!’ That’s what he’d say, ‘don’t name any­thing af­ter me’.”

She said her fa­ther would have prob­a­bly want­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

“If he want­ed any­thing, it was nev­er about him, it was not about his name. It was al­ways coun­try be­fore self and there­fore, it was what would have helped the coun­try and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form would have helped the coun­try, so that is what he’d want. I’m echo­ing his sen­ti­ment as I feel he would have said.”

Mick­ela said it was great that Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege was re­named in ho­n­our of her fa­ther. That de­ci­sion was tak­en by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha ex­ec­u­tive.

She added, “It’s great if it will in­spire the youth be­cause he was in­ter­est­ed in the youth, he loved the youth of this na­tion and he be­lieved they were the fu­ture and ed­u­ca­tion was the way out of pover­ty—how you can change your life and have con­trol of it. So, it’s a won­der­ful ho­n­our, we’re very grate­ful and I thank them on his be­half.”