Malis­sa Lara

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar failed to at­tend an Eman­ci­pa­tion Awards and din­ner func­tion last night where she was sched­uled to give the fea­ture ad­dress. The func­tion, which was held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence at Ma­coya, was host­ed by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for the Em­pow­er­ment of African Peo­ple NAEAP), which is led by T&T-born Pro­fes­sor, Sel­wyn Cud­joe. Her ab­sence, from the NAEAP func­tion, which was not of­fi­cial­ly ex­plained, fol­lows a fail­ure by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to sched­ule a meet­ing with As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Ar­turo Valen­zuela last week.

The Prime Min­is­ter's ab­sence prompt­ed a shuf­fling of the pro­gramme, which saw Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley giv­ing im­promp­tu re­marks at the func­tion. In those re­marks, Row­ley said T&T's school cur­ricu­lum has a gap­ing hole that should be oc­cu­pied with a con­scious teach­ing of our com­plete his­to­ry. Row­ley said, "We need to get our his­to­ry taught as a mat­ter of ur­gency. We are not prop­er­ly taught our his­to­ry," said Row­ley. He said the as­sign­ment of em­pow­er­ing African peo­ple would not be easy. "The as­sign­ment is nev­er go­ing to be a sim­ple one be­cause you might not even be ac­knowl­edged by the very peo­ple you are try­ing to em­pow­er," Row­ley said.

He said the T&T so­ci­ety is a com­plex one. Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion Sel­wyn Cud­joe com­pli­ment­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on her vic­to­ry at the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion and the Ju­ly 26 lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll. But he said, "All the best wish­es in the world can­not re­move you and your gov­ern­ment from hu­man frail­i­ty." He said there must be a spokesper­son who tran­scends par­ty pol­i­tics. Re­fer­ring to the state­ment last year by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopiesingh, when he was an Op­po­si­tion MP, with re­gard to eth­nic cleans­ing, Cud­joe said "Whether we like it or not, there will be more tur­bu­lent times for African peo­ple in this coun­try."

Some of the guests who at­tend­ed the func­tion, which was held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, owned by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, were Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and his wife, Port-of-Spain May­or Murchi­son Browne and Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­noir Ewart Williams.