PORT OF SPAIN – Trinidad and Tobago Friday bade a final farewell to its first president, Sir Ellis Clarke, following a two hour state funeral attended by hundreds of local dignitaries, ordinary citizens and school children.
Sir Ellis, 93, who died on December 30 last year, one month after suffering a massive stroke, was eulogised as a patriot who was the “quintessential servant of the public to whom he dedicated many years of his life”.
President George Maxwell Richards said that Sir Ellis, who was the last governor general of this oil rich twin island republic, had the task of taking the country out of colonialism into independence.
“He had to get it right and he did,” said President Richards, noting that while he has died Sir Ellis “has not left us.
‘He never can as his contribution to the birth of our nation is a fact of history that cannot be erased,” he said, telling the population that a monument to Sir Ellis would be for citizens “to do what is necessary to become …familiar with the ideas and ideals” that drove people like him to seek independence and nationhood.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, speaking at the state funeral held at the recently opened National Academy and Performing Arts building, on the outskirts of the capital, said that Sir Ellis was a patriot who went beyond partisan politics to embrace all of Trinidad and Tobago.
She said he had cleared the path for the island’s democracy “and his spirit lives on in every citizen”.
She said that the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) had agreed to establish the “Sir Ellis Clarke Chair in Commonwealth and Parliamentary Constitutional Studies”.
“This Chair will be a major centre of learning available to and serving not only Trinidad and Tobago but the entire Commonwealth, as well as students of constitutional studies all over the world. It will be of immense value as governments everywhere seek to reform and adapt their constitutions to meet national needs. (CMC)
