Progressive Labour Party members paid tribute last night to former Bahamas Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling who died at the weekend.

Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans said Sir Lynden, who died on Saturday from prostate cancer at the age of 70, had given enormous help to the PLP in its early years.

Sir Lynden became Premier in 1967 when the Bahamas were still a British colony, led the Bahamas to independence in 1973 and served as the Country's leader for 25 years.

Dame Lois said: "I am sad but rather than linger and suffer I understand he died peacefully. I have talked to the family and it's for the best.

"We go back a long way, I feel a great sadness and I am not quite over it yet. I can't talk about all his goodness right now.

"He has been a great friend to the PLP and all of its earliest leaders.

"He gave us help and guidance and materials, whatever we needed when we were a fledgling party and they were already independent.'' Dame Lois, who had studied law in England with Sir Lynden, said she last saw him at the public holiday after her party's historic 1998 election win.

"He was ecstatic, very happy for us, he was a very proud father of the PLP on that day.'' Works and Engineering Minister Alex Scott said: "I had the deepest respect for him.

"He was known and respected internationally -- in America and England and he also had close ties with Africa. We won't see the likes of him again.

"He came from a very small geographical area but he cast a very large shadow across the international forum.

"We are going to miss Sir Lynden but we are all the better for having known him. Our condolences go out to his family and of course Lady Marguerite.

"I think the Premier will give serious consideration to sending a delegation or an individual to his funeral.

"Whenever he could come he did, whenever he could support us he was there.'' However, Sir Lynden's reputation suffered from never-proven allegations of bribery and protecting drug traffickers, which clouded his country's relations with the US and contributed to his defeat in the 1992 elections by current Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham.

Mr. Ingraham on Saturday hailed Sir Lynden as "a giant of our times''.

Sir Lynden's policies helped create a large black middle class by broadening educational opportunities for the country's 172,000 people. But the Bahamas also became a major drug-trafficking haven under his tenure, in the late 1970s and 1980s, which critics blamed on government inaction.

PLP pays tribute to Sir Lynden Pindling A series of scandals -- he was accused him of covering up for drug lords in the 1980s and taking bribes as chairman of the state Hotel Commission -- contributed to his party's downfall. It won only six of the 40 seats in the National Assembly in the March 1997 elections, when Ingraham gained a second term.

A government commission was unable to substantiate any of the claims against Sir Lynden.

He told the House of Assembly in 1997, when he resigned to end his 41-year career there, that he was "less than perfect.'' "When all I did for good is put in the balance against all I did for ill or failed to do at all, I hope that future generations will not find me sorely wanting,'' he told legislators.

Despite his conflicted past, Bahamians mourned the loss of the leader known as the "Black Moses,'' who helped found the Progressive Liberal Party in 1953 as a grass-roots opposition to the mostly white colonial-run United Bahamian Party.

As news of Sir Lynden's declining health spread in the capital, Nassau, family and friends visited Sir Lynden at his home Friday. About 100 people gathered for a vigil Friday night at the First Baptist Church in Nassau.

Sir Lynden was a "man among men, whom the sons and daughters of the Bahamas will never forget,'' the Rev. Elkin Symonette said at the vigil. "Because of him we know what it is like to be independent in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.'' Sir Lynden was survived by his wife, Lady Marguerite, two sons Obafemi, 40, and Leslie, 39; two daughters, Michelle Sands, 38, and Monique Johnson, 34, and five grandchildren.