?In the new pages of his­to­ry cur­rent­ly be­ing writ­ten in T&T, ques­tions that arise in­clude whether peo­ple are fa­cil­i­tat­ing new prej­u­dices and di­vi­sions in T&T's so­ci­ety and al­so, if a mind­set of en­ti­tle­ment is be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed, says Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

In his Eman­ci­pa­tion mes­sage, Row­ley said, "The sto­ries of our past should not con­demn us to the tur­moil of ac­ri­mo­ny; but rather they should show us a path for achiev­ing the pos­i­tive and pros­per­ous de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try now and for the gen­er­a­tions to come."

"We're cur­rent­ly writ­ing new pages in our his­to­ry. We need to ask our­selves, are we fa­cil­i­tat­ing new prej­u­dices and di­vi­sions in our so­ci­ety? Are we per­pet­u­at­ing a mind­set of en­ti­tle­ment � claim­ing rights where in­stead we should ac­cept per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty? Are we com­mit­ted to work­ing to­geth­er in the best in­ter­est of our coun­try? Can we look past the 'me' and 'my group' to the big­ger pic­ture of na­tion­hood?"

Say­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion shat­tered an un­just sta­tus quo, he said, the for­mer­ly en­slaved Africans, had, af­ter Eman­ci­pa­tion, to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the di­rec­tion of their own lives. "Amid prej­u­dice and in­grained philo­soph­i­cal be­liefs of one group's in­her­ent right to dom­i­nate and den­i­grate an­oth­er, they cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for their own ad­vance­ment."

"As Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, at Eman­ci­pa­tion we re­flect on our his­to­ry and proud­ly claim our an­ces­try. We cel­e­brate free­dom and recog­nise the im­mense sac­ri­fices made by our an­ces­tors."

"While Eman­ci­pa­tion Day may be a more in­tense emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence for per­sons of African de­scent, we must re­mem­ber eman­ci­pa­tion ir­rev­o­ca­bly changed the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and so­cial re­al­i­ty not on­ly for those who were freed but al­so for the pop­u­la­tion as a whole and all those who would fol­low. To­day T&T ben­e­fits from the con­tri­bu­tions of all our cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of race, and it is un­for­tu­nate that some among us still seek to cre­ate chasms with­in the pop­u­la­tion."

"Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, along with our oth­er na­tion­al days of recog­ni­tion, are wel­come av­enues for per­son­al cel­e­bra­tions but I be­lieve they are ask­ing us to do some­thing more. They in­vite us to bet­ter un­der­stand our­selves and each oth­er, seek­ing com­mon­al­i­ties while ac­cept­ing dif­fer­ences. We have suf­fered pain, grief and in­tol­er­ance. We need an­oth­er nar­ra­tive, one dri­ven to­wards col­lec­tive re­spect, ap­pre­ci­a­tion and uni­ty of pur­pose."