PRIME Minister P J Patterson on Monday named a national committee to organise activities to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and insisted that the commemoration must proceed irrespective of whatever political changes there may be before its 2007 schedule.

The next general election is due in 2007.

“We must ensure that whatever changes may take place in the political arena there is no derailment of this bicentenary, as was the case with regard to the efforts to memorialise the iconic Haitian Revolution a year ago,” Patterson said at the launch at Jamaica House

The committee is being chaired by University of the West Indies Professor and chair of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT), Verene Shepherd and has, among its other members, education minister Maxine Henry-Wilson, the Jamaica Labour Party’s Andrew Holness, University of the West Indies Vice-chancellor, Professor Rex Nettleford and president of the Private Sector Association of Jamaica, Beverly Lopez.

Patterson did not give specific details of what shape the commemoration would take but urged the team to establish a lasting monument to mark the arrival of the nation’s forebears. He also expressed hope that the event would serve to give a fuller understanding of what took place between the early 16th century and the early 1800s where an estimated 18 million enslaved Africans were brought to the Western world.

“It is my hope that the commemoration of the bicentenary will force us to correct this regretful gap in our knowledge, that it will highlight both the consequences created by the Slave Trade and Slavery as well as its effect on the interactions, past and present, between the peoples of Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean,” he said.

He urged the committee to especially target the youths whom, he said, “need a further understanding of a history that must never be repeated”.