The Legal Counsel in the Ministry of Finance and Director-General of the International Financial Services Commission, Gian Ghandi died early this morning at the Western Regional Hospital after a long illness. Ghandi, who was the consigliore to the most powerful men in Belmopan for the past two decades, was 82.
Ghandi worked in the Government Service for 37 years and was considered virtually indispensible in the Esquivel, Musa and Barrow administrations between 1995 and 2015.
Ghandi first came to Belize as a Crown Counsel in the late 1970's from the British Public Service and worked his way from Crown Counsel, to Director of Public Prosecutions, to Solicitor General, and in his final posting, as the one of Prime Minister Dean Barrow's must trusted advisors in the job of Legal Counsel in the Ministry of Finance.
But no post or title can truly define Ghandi's unique ability to serve, and serve well whoever is the master of the day, and employ his legal acumen to assist government in lawyering or legislating itself out of most problems.
In fact, he was so valuable to the PUP, that in 1999 then Attorney General Godfrey Smith fired him as Attorney General in the morning, and by early afternoon Ralph Fonseca had hired him as legal advisor in the Ministry of Budget Management.
Such was his talent, and penchant for power - that Ghandi proved indispensible to those shuttling the corridors of power. His passing, it is said by many, is the end of an era in the highest echelons of government.
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