Prime Minister delivers Republic Day message to UNC members

De­spite crit­i­cism over her de­ci­sion to is­sue a spe­cial In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage di­rect­ed at mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again used a na­tion­al hol­i­day to de­liv­er a mes­sage specif­i­cal­ly to the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship, this time on Re­pub­lic Day.

In the mes­sage mark­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­com­ing a re­pub­lic, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told UNC sup­port­ers that the par­ty was “no longer in re­treat” and was now “dom­i­nant­ly march­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a new or­der”.

She said the UNC and its pre­de­ces­sor par­ties had been “un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, vil­i­fied and dis­re­spect­ed” since 1976, blam­ing what she de­scribed as the “self­ish­ness, cow­ardice and ar­ro­gance” of peo­ple with­in the par­ty for al­low­ing that to hap­pen.

“Those days are over,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared, warn­ing that the UNC would “ruth­less­ly and fe­ro­cious­ly de­fend” its be­liefs, poli­cies, par­ty and mem­ber­ship.

Re­flect­ing on the sig­nif­i­cance of Re­pub­lic Day, the Prime Min­is­ter said the coun­try had ac­cept­ed in 1976 the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ful­ly gov­ern­ing it­self.

How­ev­er, she ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go had failed to live up to the ex­pec­ta­tions of that mo­ment, point­ing to what she de­scribed as so­ci­etal de­cay, eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty and missed op­por­tu­ni­ties over the past 50 years.

“We can­not con­tin­ue chastis­ing ghosts of the past to numb the shame of hav­ing nev­er tru­ly lived up to the ex­pec­ta­tions we had for our­selves as a coun­try 50 years ago,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so placed strong em­pha­sis on ed­u­ca­tion and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, telling UNC mem­bers that “pow­er is some­thing you take” and that knowl­edge was es­sen­tial to us­ing pow­er for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try.

She urged mem­bers to ed­u­cate their chil­dren, work hard and re­ject al­low­ing oth­ers to de­ter­mine their fu­tures.

The Prime Min­is­ter en­cour­aged UNC sup­port­ers to be “dan­ger­ous, ruth­less, ag­gres­sive, and in­tel­li­gent”, while urg­ing them nev­er to give up on self-im­prove­ment and suc­cess.

She al­so chal­lenged what she de­scribed as a lim­it­ed un­der­stand­ing of the coun­try’s his­to­ry, say­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s her­itage ex­tend­ed be­yond slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

“Our an­ces­tors came to Trinidad and To­ba­go from great civ­i­liza­tions in Africa, In­dia, Chi­na, the Mid­dle East and Eu­rope,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar end­ed the mes­sage by ex­press­ing her love for the UNC mem­ber­ship and de­clar­ing: “WE ARE UNC AND PROUD.”