If anyone was in doubt yesterday as to why Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart and Maurice Facey were being conferred with honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from the University of Technology (UTech), all questions would have evaporated when they each took the podium.

As they addressed the sizeable mid-morning crowd inside the Alfred Sangster Auditorium on the UTech campus, it was clear that the men – both entrepreneurs who have contributed much to the development of Jamaican society in the fields of tourism, real estate development and banking – still harbour bold visions for the future development of the country.

Stewart, who is the chairman of the ATL/Sandals Group, which includes the Observer, envisions a Jamaica that takes full advantage of the development possibilities presented by “every single mile” of the country and one that takes better care of former government members.

“If I have one recommendation, it would be that when people try their best and hardest in government, after they have served their time, that they are not thrown out and sometimes criticised and left to the wolves so that some of them that were honest die in poverty,” said Stewart.

“I would like to see rules, policies and organisations that create funds for ex-politicians so that they don’t end up being thrown on the wood pile and left to struggle for their reputation in retirement,” he added to rousing applause from the audience which included past and previous members of parliament.

Using America as an example of his suggestion, Stewart said: “I have never seen or heard of a poor American ex-president.”

The Observer chairman, who also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies, said yesterday that Jamaica should also take advantage of its proximity to the United States since it presents, “whether in hospitality or in exports of various kinds, the opportunity to develop great wealth and improve the standards of living for all of the people who make up the country”.

For his part, Facey, the founding chairman of Pan Caribbean Merchant Bank and founder of the Kingston Restoration Company, conceives a capital city which boasts impressive architectural structures that “rise above the mundane to symbolise and embody the civic pride and aspirations of our people”.

“…How can we expect or legislators to ‘think outside the box’ if we encase them in that uninspired rectangle on Duke Street which we call Parliament?” Facey challenged.

“The construction of a new Parliament building with appropriate satellite structures such as a new National Gallery, an archival centre and perhaps a new Court of Appeals building should be a civic priority”, he added, suggesting that the new Parliament building could either be perched on the harbour’s edge similar to the Sydney Opera House in Australia or rise from lands in Heroes Park.

“From when I was [a young man] I had a dream about making the city of Kingston a capital of which we could be truly proud… I still cherish this dream,” said Facey.

The addition of Stewart’s and Facey’s names took to 14 the total number on UTech’s register of honorary graduates, a list which includes Professor Rex Nettleford, UTech Chancellor Lord William Morris, Dr Lloyd Barnett and New York Councilwoman Una Clarke.

“These two (names) came up without much deliberation and with full consensus from the selection committee,” UTech President Professor Errol Morrison told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

“It’s our 50th anniversary celebration and the recognition that we wanted to give over the last 50 years [was]…to see which individuals contributed most of all to development,” he explained. “Half of our university is in business [4,308 of 10,237 students] so we were looking at entrepreneurs to see who have made a difference in entrepreneurial activities.

Maurice Facey, without a doubt, with his contributions to the restructuring of the physical landscape of Kingston, New Kingston and his restoration work in downtown, and ‘Butch’ with all his innovative thrusts in tourism [that] have turned the industry around,” Morrison said.

Honorary credentials are usually conferred during the university’s commencement service, the professor said, but the committee felt that “these two needed a function of their own, so we sought how best to fit it into our anniversary celebrations. It is now the end of our 50th anniversary, this function has signalled that”.