His­to­ri­ans, politi­cians, and an­a­lysts have strong­ly re­ject­ed claims by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Dr Kirk Meighoo that Dr Er­ic Williams was not T&T’s first prime min­is­ter.

On the na­tion’s 63rd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, Meighoo ar­gued that the sto­ry of T&T’s in­de­pen­dence had been dis­tort­ed by what he called “PNM myths,” claim­ing that Williams was mere­ly the Pre­mier of T&T with­in the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion, which ex­ist­ed from 1958 to 1962, while Bar­ba­di­an Sir Grant­ley Adams served as its Prime Min­is­ter.

“Er­ic Williams was not the fa­ther of the na­tion, nor the bea­con of Caribbean uni­ty that the PNM have made him out to be. They (PNM) use these myths to dis­tort present pol­i­tics as well,” Meighoo wrote on Face­book.