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For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of en­dors­ing the dis­tor­tion of his­to­ry and facts, af­ter she dis­missed as a “non-is­sue” her par­ty’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer’s con­tro­ver­sial re­marks about Dr Er­ic Williams.

On the 63rd an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­de­pen­dence, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Dr Kirk Meighoo ig­nit­ed con­tro­ver­sy by chal­leng­ing the lega­cy of Dr Er­ic Williams, ar­gu­ing that his sta­tus as the “Fa­ther of the Na­tion” and first Prime Min­is­ter is a dis­tor­tion cre­at­ed by what he de­scribed as “PNM myths.”

Dr Meighoo ar­gued that be­cause the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion ex­ist­ed be­tween 1958 and 1962, Dr Er­ic Williams was not tech­ni­cal­ly the na­tion’s first Prime Min­is­ter but in­stead served as Pre­mier of Trinidad and To­ba­go with­in the Fed­er­a­tion, where Bar­ba­dos’ Sir Grant­ley Adams held the post of Prime Min­is­ter. He fur­ther claimed that Williams could not be re­gard­ed as a sym­bol of Caribbean uni­ty, cit­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s with­draw­al from the Fed­er­a­tion, which trig­gered its even­tu­al col­lapse.