On Mon­day Au­gust 31, we will cel­e­brate our 64th year of In­de­pen­dence. Courage, re­silience, love of God and coun­try have led us to this junc­ture. It is these and oth­er val­ues that will take us for­ward, once we ac­knowl­edge that no sin­gle eth­nic group or priv­i­leged class “owns” our beloved T&T.

Last week I was con­tact­ed by Catholic News for my com­ments on the re­cent con­tro­ver­sial is­sues on race that threat­en to de­rail us. See my ar­ti­cle in last Sun­day’s Catholic News, and lis­ten to my com­ments on Catholic News TV pro­gramme: AL­TOS. We ig­nore the risk of race and class di­vi­sions at our per­il.

The po­et, Robert Frost, right­ly said: “Peo­ple will tell you that free­dom lies in be­ing cau­tious; Free­dom lies in be­ing bold.” To­day let’s cel­e­brate those “bold” men and women who dared, not on­ly to dream of free­dom from colo­nial bondage, but ACT­ED. I nev­er grew tired of hear­ing the late Sir El­lis Clarke speak about the role he played. Not on­ly was he one of the main ar­chi­tects of the 1962 in­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion, but he al­so con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly at the Marl­bor­ough House Con­fer­ence on in­de­pen­dence for T&T in June 1962 (Lon­don)—paving the way for our In­de­pen­dence.

My fa­ther, the late Bal­go­b­in Ramdeen, served as MP for Ca­roni East in T&T’s first in­de­pen­dent Par­lia­ment (1961–1966). In an in­ter­view for the Par­lia­men­tary Chan­nel, he said: “At around mid­night on the night of Au­gust 30, 1962, my wife and I stood in front of the Red House, with oth­er Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and their wives. We stood with many oth­er dig­ni­taries, in­clud­ing Princess Al­ice, the Princess Roy­al, who rep­re­sent­ed the Queen.

“I watched the Union Jack slow­ly be­ing low­ered for the last time and then I watched with a tremen­dous sense of pride, dig­ni­ty and ho­n­our as the Red, White and Black—our T&T flag, was hoist­ed for the first time. A na­tion was born—our na­tion. We were no longer a British colony. Now we would be able to gov­ern our­selves; to chart our course to­geth­er as a peo­ple—come hell or high wa­ter.”

To­day democ­ra­cy is the world’s pre­dom­i­nant form of gov­ern­ment, and al­though the con­cept takes many forms, there are cer­tain key fea­tures that we in T&T say we em­brace eg, “Re­spect for ba­sic hu­man rights; A mul­ti-par­ty po­lit­i­cal sys­tem paired with po­lit­i­cal tol­er­ance; A de­mo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ing sys­tem; Re­spect for the rule of law; De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance; and Cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion” (www.civic­sacad­e­my.co.za).

Each of us has a role to play to en­sure that T&T’s democ­ra­cy is un­der­pinned by val­ues that re­spect the in­nate dig­ni­ty of each per­son; pro­mote au­then­tic in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment - work­ing to elim­i­nate pover­ty and so­cial ex­clu­sion, build­ing the com­mon good, and cre­at­ing con­di­tions that will en­able in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, or­gan­i­sa­tions, and the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment to flour­ish.

I urge those elect­ed to keep the promis­es made dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns, work to serve ALL the peo­ple, put in place sys­tems to root out cor­rup­tion and abuse of pow­er at all lev­els, pro­mote in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, en­sure that there is eq­ui­ty in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the re­sources of the na­tion and that these re­sources are used to im­prove liv­ing con­di­tions/stan­dards in T&T—thus liv­ing up to John Mc­Cormick’s view that peo­ple liv­ing in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic na­tions typ­i­cal­ly have a “… high stan­dard of liv­ing when mea­sured by the avail­abil­i­ty of jobs, ed­u­ca­tion, health care, con­sumer choice, and ba­sic ser­vices.”

T&T’s Re­pub­lic Day will be ob­served on Sep­tem­ber 24. We live in chal­leng­ing times—glob­al­ly. Our coun­try faces re­al prob­lems that re­quire re­al so­lu­tions. Let’s use our God-giv­en gifts to strength­en our democ­ra­cy.

Dr Er­ic Williams’ In­de­pen­dence Day Ad­dress is worth re-read­ing. In­ter alia, he said: “What use will you make of your in­de­pen­dence? ... What­ev­er the chal­lenge that faces you, from what­ev­er quar­ter, place al­ways first the na­tion­al in­ter­est and the na­tion­al cause. The strength of the Na­tion de­pends on the strength of its cit­i­zens. Our Na­tion­al An­them in­vokes God’s bless­ings on our Na­tion, in re­sponse to those thou­sands of cit­i­zens of all faiths who de­mand­ed God’s pro­tec­tion in our Con­sti­tu­tion. Let us then as a Na­tion so con­duct our­selves as to be able al­ways to say in those no­blest and most in­spir­ing words of St Paul, ‘By the Grace of God we as peo­ple are what we are, and His Grace in us hath not been void’.”

Like the Sanko­fa bird, let’s look back at our his­to­ry, learn from our ex­pe­ri­ences and con­tin­ue to chart our course for­ward.

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence Day!