Letter: Thank you Mr AG for making us ready to believe in ourselves again!

Thank you, Honourable AG!To borrow from my favourite person, President Barack Obama, you know, they said this day would never come. They said your sights were set too high. They said this country was too puny, this government too incompetent to accomplish what you set out do.

But, of all days, on Diwalee Day, a most auspicious moment in national calendar, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do. You have done what the Island of Tobago can do in eleven weeks. You have conquered a Goliath and made him pay us handsomely for not keeping his end of the bargain regarding his pact with us, the people.

Mr AG, for the past few days, I’ve been observing citizens (foreigners too) standing up and declaring how amazing your victory over BAE was and what it signals. 

Openly, many are saying that now is the time to set aside contrived division and for us to stand together as one nation, one people, under the sun. Yes, people are insisting the time has come to move beyond the bitterness, pettiness and anger that have consumed our politics for many years. 

They’re yearning for an end to the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. They want to build a lasting coalition of unity that stretches from the Caribbean Sea face of the Northern Range to the Trinity Hills on the Columbus Channel coast, from Charlotteville to Crown Point. Because that's the only how we'll finally meet and overcome the challenges that we face as a nation.

I agree with them, because doing that means we are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change has come to Trinbago for good. 

Yes, Mr AG, your victory over BAE sends a powerful message to the vested interests who think money and backroom influence speak louder than our voices. The message is, they don't own this government -- we do. And we are here to stay.

Mr AG, I know you didn't do this for personal fame or glory. From what I understand, you had such things before you were chosen to be Attorney General. You did this because you believe so deeply in the true patriotic philosophy that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it for the good of all. 

I know that because I'll never forget that speech you gave in Trou Macaque last month. I heard you say then how difficult a struggle it was for your own family and of the sacrifices your siblings made to ensure you got a good education and how you’ve applied that education to fight for justice for the small man. 

So while for many months I used to agree with people when they teased, even derided, you for taking bold initiatives as Attorney General, from the time I heard you speak at Trou Macaque, I knew your every move was driven by your bedrock of hope, not blind or carefree optimism, and that you were a man who never underestimates the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in your path, or the road he’s travelled in life.

I guess I can safely say you are not one who sits on the sidelines or shirks from a fight. In other words, you are a man driven by hope. And hope, we know, is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us around the corner or just beyond the horizon, if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

Hope is the bedrock of this nation, Mr AG. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for what is, who have the courage to strive tirelessly to reshape the world as it should be. That, Mr AG, is the real impact of your victory! 

Thank you, sir, for making us ready to believe in ourselves again!

May God bless you and guide you!Candice Bartholomew-Reyes | Block 44, Trou Macaque, Laventille