BARBADOS PRIME MINISTER BIG UP SEAGA

Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has paid trib­ute to for­mer Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Ed­ward Sea­ga who died to­day on Tues­day, prais­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of Ja­maica and the re­gion

In her trib­ute Mot­t­ley said “Ja­maica and the Caribbean have lost a true son and states­man.”

Sea­ga died on his 89th birth­day.

Mot­t­ley ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and all Ja­maica.

She not­ed that Sea­ga had served his coun­try in Par­lia­ment “with dis­tinc­tion for a record 43 years, dat­ing back to 1962, in­clud­ing from 1980 to 1989 as its fifth prime min­is­ter. More im­por­tant­ly, he served through some of the coun­try’s most tur­bu­lent eco­nom­ic and so­cial times, but al­ways re­mained true to his prin­ci­ples.”

PM Mot­t­ley said Sea­ga’s pass­ing “ought to re­mind us of the du­ty we all have while we are yet alive to use every tal­ent with which we are blessed to con­tribute to the bet­ter­ment of those im­me­di­ate­ly around us, and the world gen­er­al­ly.”

She said “Mr Sea­ga, through his love for, and de­vo­tion to, Ja­maica and his com­mit­ment to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion has cer­tain­ly left us all in the Caribbean a lega­cy of ser­vice that by far out­weighed his al­most nine decades on this earth.”

Sea­ga ac­cord­ing to Mot­t­ley had giv­en much, from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed States, where he was born in­to a Ja­maican/Lebanese fam­i­ly, to suc­cess­ful record pro­duc­er in Ja­maica, then on to the Ja­maica Sen­ate at the ten­der age of 29 on the nom­i­na­tion of leg­endary trade union­ist Sir Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante and lat­er leader of the Ja­maica Labour Par­ty and Prime Min­is­ter.

Mot­t­ley said the re­gion will miss his “al­ways thought­ful and pre­cise com­men­tary on mat­ters of im­por­tance to its peo­ple.”

To his wife and chil­dren, Mot­t­ley said “we in Bar­ba­dos wish for you strength and com­fort at this time of sad­ness.”