Pay­ing trib­ute to a man who bol­stered her dur­ing her po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wept at the fu­ner­al of Prem­c­hand Sookoo yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing him as a role mod­el for all coun­cil­lors.

Ad­dress­ing hun­dreds who gath­ered at Ra­mai Trace, Debe, for Sookoo’s fu­ner­al, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­called how Sookoo men­tored her dur­ing her ear­ly po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, guid­ing her from a coun­cil­lor to the lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of which he was a found­ing mem­ber.

The 77-year-old, who ded­i­cat­ed 33 years of his life to pub­lic ser­vice, was cre­mat­ed at the Shore of Peace, Mos­qui­to Creek. He was re­gard­ed as the longest-serv­ing coun­cil­lor in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean serv­ing con­stituents from 1983 to 2016.