Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day cel­e­brat­ed his 90th birth­day on Wednes­day and joked with fam­i­ly and friends that the rea­son he has not yet gone to Heav­en is that "some­one up there" knows he'd be de­mand­ing bet­ter wages and work­ing hours for an­gels.

Pan­day, who was born on May 25, 1933, served as the coun­try's fifth prime min­is­ter be­tween No­vem­ber 9, 1995 and De­cem­ber 24, 2001.

He told a small func­tion of friends and fam­i­ly he wouldn't have want­ed to cel­e­brate it any­where else but here in T&T, al­though his wife Oma and chil­dren were sug­gest­ing oth­er things like a cruise or a trip to The Mal­dives.

One daugh­ter, he said, sug­gest­ed go­ing to Dis­ney­land.

"I thought she prob­a­bly heard the adage, 'once a man twice a child'," Pan­day said, adding, "My de­sire was not to be any­where else on this, my 90th birth­day, but with my fam­i­ly and dear friends whom I have ne­glect­ed for so many years when I was con­sumed with pol­i­tics."

He thanked his fam­i­ly for or­gan­is­ing the func­tion and ex­pressed grat­i­tude to all who "have been re­spon­si­ble for help­ing me ex­ceed my bib­li­cal al­lot­ment of three­score and 10 years by 20 years."

He then told them why he felt he had been al­lowed to stay on this earth for so long.

"Two for­mer sug­ar work­ers were ar­gu­ing over the rea­son why I lived so long and one of them said, 'Boy some­body up there likes him.' The oth­er fel­la said, 'Don't be stu­pid, no­body up there likes him, some­body up there knows him and if he would come up there, the first thing he would do is to ask for short­er hours and high­er wages for the an­gels. And if he doesn't get it, first thing he would do is to strike, lock­out, go slow and every­thing, so leave that fel­la down there."

He said while he didn't know how long he'd be "here again," he want­ed, on this oc­ca­sion, to be with them.

Pan­day, who served as a lawyer, politi­cian, trade union­ist, econ­o­mist, ac­tor and for­mer civ­il ser­vant, was al­so the first per­son of East In­di­an de­scent to hold the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter of T&T.

He al­so served as the pres­i­dent-gen­er­al of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Trade Union from 1973 to 1995.