An­na-Lisa Paul

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has promised to hold wide­spread pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions re­gard­ing the re­moval of stat­ues/sculp­tures that glo­ri­fy colonis­ers and mem­bers of the slave trade soon af­ter the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sults are an­nounced.

He made the promise dur­ing the open­ing of the Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Diego Mar­tin yes­ter­day, as he ac­knowl­edged the calls and pub­lic dis­cus­sions that con­tin­ue to sur­round the re­moval of the Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue in Port-of-Spain.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks ago, the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project (CRFP) de­liv­ered a pe­ti­tion with over 8,000 sig­na­tures to Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez call­ing for the city’s Colum­bus mon­u­ment to be re­moved due to its as­so­ci­a­tion with the coun­try's colonis­ers.

In a state­ment then, the CRFP said, "Fifty-eight years af­ter In­de­pen­dence we can­not con­tin­ue this ca­su­al cel­e­bra­tion of colo­nial vi­o­lence. The coun­try’s mon­u­ments must now come to re­flect our di­ver­si­ty and em­body our high­est ideals, ex­press­ing some­thing about who we are and what we as­pire to be in the con­text of our Caribbean Civ­i­liza­tion."

The CRFP pro­posed that the stat­ue be moved from its cur­rent place of pub­lic rev­er­ence, next to Tamarind Square, to a mu­se­um where it can be prop­er­ly con­tex­tu­alised. The or­gan­i­sa­tion claimed to have ex­pres­sions of sup­port from in­dige­nous lead­ers and re­gion­al his­to­ri­ans, in­clud­ing Pro­fes­sors Brins­ley Sama­roo, Brid­get Br­ere­ton, Claudius Fer­gus, Verene Shep­ard and UWI Vice-chan­cel­lor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les.

Be­yond Colum­bus, the CRFP al­so called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­mis­sion to re­view all the city’s sim­i­lar land­marks as well as the names on pub­lic build­ings, streets, plazas and plaques.

De­scrib­ing his­to­ry as a chang­ing ta­pes­try yes­ter­day, Row­ley said, "If there is need to change be­cause you are not sat­is­fied with the role that the ex­is­tent is play­ing...then we need not fight one an­oth­er over change. Colum­bus has gone a long time ago, let's not fight over the stat­ue."

He added, "If we are no longer pre­pared to ac­cept a colo­nial rel­ic el­e­vat­ed in our midst, then let's just look at it civil­ly and de­cide if he should be on a pedestal in Port-of-Spain or in the mu­se­um."

How­ev­er, the PM has­tened to add, "But there is one thing you can't do...you can't write a text­book for any of our chil­dren and truth­ful­ly say that Colum­bus the Ital­ian did not go to Spain and sail to the West­ern world and had a tremen­dous im­pact on all of us here in T&T, good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent."

Voic­ing agree­ment with the call for change, Row­ley said, "I say yes for change but not change in mob rule, and change with­out in­for­ma­tion, change with knowl­edge and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion that whether the sto­ry was good or bad, we need to know it. More im­por­tant­ly, our chil­dren need to know it."

Once the elec­tion is com­plet­ed, Row­ley promised, "We are go­ing to get some com­mu­ni­ty con­ver­sa­tions go­ing at the na­tion­al lev­el and de­ter­mine what we do about this mat­ter in a very civ­il, sane and sober way."

He said while, "some stat­ues will sur­vive and some may not, but we do so on the ba­sis of knowl­edge."