Kambon: Panday broke barriers

EMANCIPATION Support Committee director (Regional and Pan African Affairs) Khafra Kambon has said former prime minister Basdeo Panday was a man who broke down barriers in public life.

Against this background, Kambon believed Panday might have been pleased to see HOPE political leader Timothy Hamel-Smith and his deputy Karen Nunez-Tesheira climb over a fence at the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts in San Fernando on January 9, to attend his state funeral.

Panday, 90, died in the US on January 1 after going there in mid-December for medical treatment.

In a statement on January 15, Kambon said part of Panday's dynamic persona was a "spirit of controversy and challenge to barriers."

He added it appeared this same spirit seemed to have caused the "unexpected acts of two public figures who, in the absence of invitations, literally crossed steel barriers to be part of his funeral service."

Nunez-Tesheira and Hamel-Smith claimed they had to do so because they did not receive invitations to the funeral.

Their claims were rejected by Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne.

Kambon praised Panday for his advocacy of sugar workers as leader of the All Trinidad and Sugar General Workers Trade Union.

He said Panday’s militancy in defence of workers, even those he did not formally represent, was demonstrated during a historic bus strike in 1969 called by the Transport and Industrial Workers Union (TIWU) led by Joe Young, a strike which the Guardian described as “a political confrontation with the government.”

Kambon also praised Panday for honouring renowned Pan Africanist Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).

"In 1996, honourable Basdeo Panday lifted the ban which had been imposed on Ture, enabling him to return to Trinidad and Tobago to a hero’s welcome after years of exile."

Kambon added that Panday's outstanding role in trade unionism and mass mobilisation, especially in the late 19060s, paved the way for his eventual rise in politics and being elected prime minister in 1995.