To­ba­go will bid farewell to its first chief sec­re­tary, Ho­choy Charles, to­day. Charles died at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on De­cem­ber 31 at the age of 77.

The fu­ner­al ser­vice will be held at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex from 11 am.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said all To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of­fices will be closed, grant­i­ng leave to em­ploy­ees to at­tend the fu­ner­al. He al­so said all schools on the is­land will be closed, with each school send­ing a group of 20 stu­dents and two teach­ers to pay their re­spects.

To ac­com­mo­date the fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion, the stretch of road be­tween Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School and the Food Hub will be tem­porar­i­ly closed to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic from 8-9 am. View­ing of the body will take place from 9-11 am. Pre-record­ed trib­utes will be paid dur­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice.

Au­gus­tine ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Charles on be­half of the is­land, say­ing, “To­ba­go re­mains grate­ful for the fight he put up on our be­half, and we look for­ward to not just ho­n­our­ing him to­mor­row but al­so in the near fu­ture.”

The cost for the ser­vice and fu­ner­al arrange­ments at Bel­grove’s will be cov­ered by the THA.

Fol­low­ing the fu­ner­al, a repass will be held at the Gold­en Lane Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre to pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for mourn­ers to gath­er and re­mem­ber Charles. For those un­able to at­tend in per­son, a live stream of the ser­vice will be avail­able.

Charles was po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion’s (NAR) To­ba­go arm, where he won the 1996 THA elec­tion.

Au­gus­tine de­scribed him as “the most pro­lif­ic, mod­ern, and in­flu­en­tial voice for au­ton­o­my for the is­land”, high­light­ing his con­sis­ten­cy, bold­ness and ded­i­ca­tion to the fight for To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my. He said he hopes to re­vive one of Charles’ ini­tia­tives that had faced crit­i­cism—the mon­u­ment done dur­ing the Ring Bang project.

The Ring Bang mon­u­ment, de­pict­ing a 60-foot high danc­ing man, was erect­ed at Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go, as part of the BBC/WGHB 2000 Mil­len­ni­um Day live 24-hour glob­al broad­cast ini­tia­tive on De­cem­ber 31, 1999.

The mon­u­ment, weigh­ing 20 tonnes, was made of stiff­ened 12-inch di­am­e­ter struc­tur­al tub­ing and po­si­tioned just in time for the Mil­len­ni­um con­cert fes­tiv­i­ties.

The project was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with New Me­dia Ltd, a com­pa­ny which was owned by Guyana-born Ed­die Grant. The THA paid Grant’s com­pa­ny US$6.65 mil­lion ($40.9 mil­lion) in an arrange­ment which was sup­posed to give To­ba­go a 39-minute fea­ture on the BBC and show­case To­ba­go and its cul­ture. For Charles, the in­vest­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­cert ini­tia­tive was seen as a lu­cra­tive in­ter­na­tion­al deal with po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial re­turns.

How­ev­er, the chil­dren’s con­cert leg was can­celled and main event flopped, and Charles faced crit­i­cism and ac­cu­sa­tions of be­ing duped by Grant and wastage of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, re­sult­ing in the even­tu­al aban­don­ment of the mon­u­ment.

It was re­port­ed that the ini­tia­tive was seen as one of the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to Charles’ elec­tion de­feat against the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in 2001.

Some 23 years lat­er, work­men cleared the site this week and prepa­ra­tions are un­der­way to light the mon­u­ment as a trib­ute to Charles.

Yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine de­fend­ed Charles, say­ing To­ba­go may not have tru­ly un­der­stood his vi­sion and high­light­ing his sig­nif­i­cant role in the is­land’s de­vel­op­ment and the es­tab­lish­ment of the THA.

“Whether you’re a po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­sary of him, whether you sup­port­ed his pol­i­tics or not, you cer­tain­ly can ap­pre­ci­ate that Charles played quite a vi­tal role for the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land and set­ting up of the THA as we know it. And so, it is our wish that is prop­er­ly ho­n­oured to­mor­row at the fu­ner­al ser­vice.”

Au­gus­tine al­so men­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of light­ing up the mon­u­ment. While un­sure of the im­me­di­ate fea­si­bil­i­ty of this, he said there is hope to have it il­lu­mi­nat­ed for a sev­en-day pe­ri­od start­ing from to­mor­row night to en­sure vis­i­bil­i­ty, even at night.

“In Charles’ pass­ing, as an is­land, when we look back, we need to ask our­selves if we were to­tal­ly fair to him in how we as­sess some of these ini­tia­tives such as the Ring Bang ini­tia­tive.”