The Congress of the People (COP) has said its leader will attend the so-called “celebratory rally” on May 24 but COP is uneasy about a celebration. The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) is expressing the same sentiment, and, at the time of writing, it is not even clear if the MSJ leader David Abdulah would share the platform on Thursday with his PP colleagues.
The online chat groups, the opposition, the media commentators and analysts are singing from the same song sheet without making an effort to consider what it is the government is “celebrating”.
Let us put the political posturing aside and, for a moment, try to understand why we are gathering on Thursday in Chaguanas.
We are doing it to account to the people – all the people – about the stewardship over the past year. We are doing it to say thanks for uniting and working together to change the politics of our country and to create a new era in which service takes precedence over power. What is so wrong about that?
Slavery was abolished in 1834. Today, nearly 200 years after the event, we take time off for one day every year to celebrate Emancipation Day. Similarly we commemorate the arrival of the first Indians to our country in 1845 with a national holiday every year. Labour gathers on June 19 every year to celebrate. We are also happy to celebrate events that are significant to our development. And that is how it should be.
So what is wrong with a government celebrating with the people an event that has changed the history and social and economic landscape of Trinidad & Tobago forever?
That event was the removal of an administration that was driving the country to becoming a failed state and the installation of a new administration that was and continues to be a coalition of interests that is representative of all races and classes in our society regardless of gender, religious beliefs and political affiliation.
It was a people’s victory against a government that had demonstrated dictatorial tendencies and a governing elite that was collapsing under the weight of what some of its own members described as the most corrupt administration ever in the history of Trinidad & Tobago.
The 432,026 citizens who stained their fingers to elect 29 members of the People’s Partnership coalition included members of the opposition, people who did not have any political preferences and others who just wanted change because they had become tired of living in fear.
That event – the defeat of the Manning PNM administration – was the revolutionary change for which the people had been clamouring since Manning won re-election in 2007. They had been pleading for leadership, which they got with the emergence of Kamla Persad-Bissessar as the first female leader of a major political party and later, Prime Minister.
She brought together people and organisations that had previously drawn political swords against one another in their unsuccessful quest for control of the state without putting enough emphasis on the value and strength of unity and commitment to service.
Kamla promised to embrace everyone, “to place my loving hands around our country” and unite the opposition in order to remove a government that cared not for the people but its own survival and the welfare of its friends.
The five leaders of the People’s Partnership who stood together had individual priorities but they had one thing in common that was more important than everything else – saving the country from collapse and ruin.
That event two years ago was historic in every way and is worthy of celebrating every day.
It does not diminish the government’s commitment to the people; on the contrary it reinforces it. It does not say that all the problems inherited and the new ones that have been spawned have been solved. It does not say the government is ignoring the needs of the people. It says none of these things.
What it does say is that after another year in office it is important for the political leadership to take a few hours off to celebrate what they and the citizens of the country have been able to achieve by working together to build a better country for all of us and for generations to come.
That is cause for celebration that is as justifiable as any of the events that we celebrate with great enthusiasm every year. It is a celebration of political rebirth, a celebration of commitment, the maturity of our people and the re-dedication to unity. It is a celebration of the will of the people and their determination to take charge of their destiny.
It is the acknowledgement of an important milestone in our development, a quantum leap forward for all of us. That is why we as a country must accept the invitation to gather in Chaguanas, to celebrate because together, WE STAND STRONG! United, we all win!
Jai Parasram | 20 May 2012
Jai Parasram | 20 May 2012
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