Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A large white and red flo­ral trib­ute and a sin­gle white rose were placed on the desk where D’Abadie/O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian sat in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

As the Low­er House met to de­bate an ex­ten­sion to the State of Emer­gency, trib­ute was paid to Mor­ris-Ju­lian, who died in a fire at her Ari­ma house on De­cem­ber 16, 2024, along with two of her chil­dren, Xi­anne, 25 and Je­si­ah, six.

All MPs from the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bench­es wore white bou­ton­nières and flo­ral pins.

There was al­so a minute’s si­lence for a woman de­scribed as a gift to Par­lia­ment, coun­try, com­mu­ni­ty and fam­i­ly, a moth­er who pro­tect­ed her fam­i­ly to the end and a self­less per­son who served ad­mirably.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley led the trib­utes. He said Mor­ris-Ju­lian, a moth­er to four at her home, was al­so a moth­er to thou­sands of oth­ers and in her short life had a mul­ti-faceted ca­reer main­ly in the role of ed­u­ca­tion, pub­lic ser­vice and pol­i­tics.

“Dur­ing her term in Par­lia­ment, she was qui­et but ef­fec­tive. As a teacher, she was al­so qui­et but ef­fec­tive. As a may­or, she was more ef­fec­tive than be­ing qui­et. She was known to be a per­son who oth­er per­sons got along with, as she was of such a pleas­ant dis­po­si­tion and every­one who knew her could not but no­tice how moth­er­ly she was and how com­fort­able and ex­cit­ed she was work­ing for the na­tion’s chil­dren in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.”

Row­ley added, “It was a tremen­dous shock to all of us to have re­ceived the news of her trag­ic pass­ing un­der such hor­ren­dous cir­cum­stances be­cause for many of us, she was a light that was get­ting brighter - a bea­con to more peo­ple in this na­tion hold­ing out a promise that we could be bet­ter and our bet­ter selves were ahead of us.

“Lisa stood on prin­ci­ple...she was a gift to this Par­lia­ment, she was a gift to this na­tion, she was a gift to the com­mu­ni­ty of Ari­ma and she was a gift to her fam­i­ly.

“But these gifts have an end date and Lisa’s end date came much too soon for the rest of us... if she was a gift from God, we can on­ly ac­cept that God has tak­en the best...And for those who didn’t know her, you missed a cit­i­zen of the high­est im­port.”

‘Pro­tect­ing her fam­i­ly to the end’- Lee

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee added, “To­day, we all, re­gard­less of the side of the po­lit­i­cal aisle we sit on, mourn the loss of a col­league and two of her beau­ti­ful chil­dren in the most heart­break­ing of cir­cum­stances.

“She was pas­sion­ate about her role. We in the Op­po­si­tion ac­knowl­edge her com­mit­ment to pub­lic ser­vice work­ing her way up from the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el to the Par­lia­men­tary lev­el.”

He added, “It is clear that as a moth­er and a wife Lisa Mor­ris Ju­lian bal­anced pub­lic life but en­sured that she did all to pre­serve the love of her fam­i­ly and put her fam­i­ly first. To the very end, she up­held that du­ty, pro­tect­ing her fam­i­ly. She demon­strat­ed that the love of a moth­er knows no bounds and can­not be bro­ken.”

‘Self­less soul’ -Speak­er

House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George said Mor­ris-Ju­lian served with hu­mil­i­ty.

“When this House was ad­journed on De­cem­ber 9th, 2024, I would nev­er have imag­ined hav­ing to re-en­ter the Cham­ber and be greet­ed by the emp­ty seat that the late Mrs Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, once oc­cu­pied.”

An­nisette-George said Mor­ris-Ju­lian served T&T with gen­uine­ness, hu­mil­i­ty and dis­tinc­tion.

“She gave of her­self self­less­ly, shar­ing both her time and her ex­per­tise with a spir­it of will­ing­ness, care and love... she will­ing­ly an­swered the call to par­tic­i­pate in the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties or­gan­ised by the Par­lia­ment, and hav­ing com­plet­ed those oblig­a­tions, would of­ten leave these events, which ran late in­to the night, and turn to ad­dress con­stituents’ con­cerns.”

Apart from proud­ly ho­n­our­ing her her­itage as a de­scen­dant of the In­dige­nous/First Peo­ples, An­nisette-George cit­ed Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s ex­pe­ri­ence as a teacher, which in­flu­enced her role as a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an and her de­vo­tion to chil­dren’s wel­fare.

She said Mor­ris-Ju­lian kept her fam­i­ly at the fore­front

of every­thing she did, even in Par­lia­ment.

“These words from her fi­nal con­tri­bu­tion de­scribe her best: ‘I am a moth­er of chil­dren...I was not al­ways an MP, I was not al­ways a politi­cian.’

“And it was Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, the moth­er, whose last mo­ments in­volved a self­less act of courage and the nat­ur­al sac­ri­fice of moth­er­hood.”

A con­do­lence mes­sage from Guyana’s Par­lia­ment was al­so among the trib­utes.

And Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans al­so ho­n­oured the mem­o­ry of for­mer UNC Pointe-a-Pierre MP William “Bill” Chai­tan, who died in De­cem­ber. They ob­served a mo­ment’s si­lence.