"Get up. Stand up, for your rights. Don't give up the fight".Jack Warner used Bob Marley's immortal lyrics Sunday to urge the youth of Trinidad and Tobago to proclaim the message of change that he said is sweeping the country.
Warner was speaking at the Summit of the Youth, an apolitical event under his patronage at the Centre of Excellence. The featured speaker at the event was Donna Brazile, the U.S. Democratic Party strategist and media commentator. Warner said he invited her to "inspire the youth".
Although the event was not political the MP for Chaguanas West injected politics into the evening when he implored the youth to create change with their voices and their feet.
"When they decide to build a smelter whose air and oceans do they pollute? It is Yours! When they lack the political will to address crime and publicly embrace gang heads as Community leaders, whose streets and blocks become the killing fields? It is Yours!" he said.
"When they squander billions of dollars in grandiose projects and architectural monuments of jet-setting imperial egos whose lives and futures are being destroyed? It is Yours!" he added.
The MP and deputy political leader of the United National Congress (UNC) who has vowed to create a "new UNC" asked the youth gathered for the summit, "How much longer must you live so poorly in this oil rich country drenched in corruption, incompetence and callousness? Who takes responsibility for putting an end to the madness?"
He answered the question by telling them they are the ones who must take the responsibility to the end the ills plaguing the society. He said now is the time to take action. "There is no better place, no more urgent a time, than this very moment. Claim it. Honour yourself," he said.
He asked each one gathered at the Centre of Excellence to begin by agitating for a reduction of the age from 25 to 18 that one can become a Senator in Trinidad & Tobago.
He made it a special point to salute his special guest, 23-year-old Barbadian Senator Damien Griffin, "who has been a Senator there for the last 18 months articulating the concerns of young people".
Warner said, "I ask you, each of you, all of you, in your own special way to become that colour of change, the change you want to be, the change you should be and must be."
In her speech Brazile urged the nation's youth to get involved, telling them they are never too young to make a difference. She told of her own story of getting involved as a child to support a politician who promised to build a playground in her community.
She urged them to ask questions in life refuse to just sit back. She said they should follow the message of U.S. President Barack Obama, a simple message of hope and change.
"You have to believe in God and you have to do what's right," she said adding that everything is possible for those who want to make a difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment