Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrapped up a na­tion­al day of prayer at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, last night by ex­tend­ing a branch of hope to the cit­i­zen­ry say­ing, "bet­ter days are com­ing." Speak­ing with re­porters last evening af­ter hand­ing out gifts to scores of sup­port­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar com­ment­ed on re­cent polls which showed that her Gov­ern­ment had a de­cline in its per­for­mance rat­ings for the past year. Ac­cord­ing to re­cent polls, in­clud­ing last Sun­day's ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre's poll in the Sun­day Guardian, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rat­ing has fall­en over the last year. The PM said that de­spite the set­backs, she was com­mit­ted to mak­ing T&T a bet­ter place.

She said the day of prayer which was at­tend­ed by Pen­te­costals, Hin­dus, Mus­lims, Ba­ha'is, Bap­tists, Pres­by­te­ri­ans and Bud­dhists was in­spi­ra­tional. "It was won­der­ful, very in­spi­ra­tional, health-lift­ing and giv­ing me the courage to con­tin­ue to serve to do bet­ter than we did in the last year," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "I want to give praise and thanks to God." She said her Gov­ern­ment would learn from the mis­takes of the past and do what was in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple. "I want to thank the peo­ple of T&T for the con­fi­dence they placed in my Gov­ern­ment," she said. "Bet­ter days are com­ing, im­prove­ments are com­ing in the next year. "I want to thank the peo­ple as we con­tin­ue to strive to do bet­ter."

In her fea­ture ad­dress at the ser­vice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the cit­i­zen­ry to look past dif­fer­ences.

She called for cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty and ac­cep­tance of all race and eth­nic­i­ties. "When you look in­to some­one's face, do not see their race...you must see the face of God," the PM said. "Be­cause we all be­long to one race-the hu­man race. "We may have made mis­takes, but we will learn from those mis­takes...Those who fail to make mis­takes, fail to learn."