Fazal Karim was helpful to Guyanese

Feb 03, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

I write to express gratitude as tribute to late former Trinidad Minister of Tertiary Education Fazal Karim. He was very helpful to Guyanese students and supportive of the struggle for free and fair elections in Guyana and Guyanese traders or hucksters in Trinidad. He served T&T in several capacities including one five-year term as Senator (and Minister) and one term as MP, representing Chaguanas East where many Guyanese are settled and who supported his campaign for office. I did some polling for him. He touched the lives of Guyanese not only in Trinidad and Tobago but the Diaspora as well, and they also commended his work that benefited the public including Guyanese.

Karim was good to Guyanese and they to him. Indian Guyanese voted for him in ethnically divided Trinidad and some also donated to his election campaign. He invited me to his activities in his ministry and his constituency whenever I was on the island, virtually every couple months, including several outreaches. Guyanese businesses and medical professionals supported his several outreach programmes in the constituency when he was MP, and I was able to interact with them about life in Trinidad as a Guyanese. They spoke positively of Karim having known him in interactions in New York, Trinidad, and Guyana (where he visited multiple times). He did his best to help people in need.

My association with Karim went back to the early 1990s when he was very close with Basdeo Panday who I engaged and assisted in politics going back to 1978. Karim served as Secretary of UNC for several years. He was among the most trusted lieutenant of the party’s founder. I saw him several times at Panday’s residence when he was PM (November 1995 to December 2001). Unfortunately, Karim’s relationship with Panday fell apart when he supported Kamla Persad Bissessar for leader in the internal election of January 2010. He, like me, felt Panday, as polls showed, could not take UNC into government again. He had faith in my polling, a new concept that I introduced in the UNC in the early 1990s. He, like me, knew from my polling that Kamla would win the leadership, and he backed her to the chagrin of Panday. Kamla won the leadership in January 2010. Kamla also won snap general elections in May and Karim was rewarded with a Ministry and subsequently to contest a relatively safe (Indian) seat to parliament.

During his tenure as Minister of Tertiary Education, May 2010 to September 2015, he assisted many students (including Guyanese) with their studies at UWI, even assisting with tuition those who faced difficulties with raising funds to continue their studies. He also opposed the harassment of Guyanese sellers who were plying their goods in Chaguanas market.

Karim and I had multiple encounters and exchanges for the last thirty years in Trinidad and on the phone including a few months ago. He had asked me and another prominent Guyanese, Ashook Ramsaran, and a Trini to help with reconciliation between Panday and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj to unite factions in the UNC. We succeeded! He was among a few Ministers in Trinidad and Guyana who returned calls – never a neemakharam — and honoured my requests to help people in distress in Trinidad. After he became a Minister in 2010, Karim queried whether I was interested in a teaching job at the university. I graciously declined. Once I teased him that he did not invite me to a Ministry’s social function at the Hyatt. He responded and announced in the presence of others including Ministerial colleagues: “You don’t need an invite to attend any event I or my Ministry hosts, and you are free to visit my office any time. It is because of your assistance that UNC is in government now under Kamla and previously under Panday”. (I was always welcomed at events hosted by his colleagues and Panday and Kamla when they were PM).

On polling, Karim would regularly ask how he was doing as a Minister and how the party was doing in popular support. He received frank, honest reports. Since around 2018, when he was a MP, he told me in private that the UNC could not return to government without reform and change. Polls showed the party would lose. Karim was denied a seat in 2020; the UNC lost the elections. Ongoing polls show it will lose in 2025 without reform and change.

In recent years, including for the 2020 elections, he stated that UNC would not win and will not win in 2025 unless there is internal reform. He did not see the party reforming itself.

He told me he met Jagan and Bharrat Jagdeo multiple times. In 2020, he expressed concern about the attempt to rig the 2020 elections to deny Irfaan Ali the presidency.

At the time of his passing, we were engaged in exchanges on how to effect political change in T&T and provide better representation and governance. He had been trying to bring disparate factions together to contest the coming elections. Polls show another Keith Rowley victory with change in UNC.

Karim will be remembered by those of us who closely engaged him and for his contributions to T&T in the field of education.

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