Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is urg­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to strive to be and do bet­ter, as he lament­ed the chal­lenges the is­land faces with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. Dur­ing the 62nd In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tion at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex, Au­gus­tine chose to do some­thing dif­fer­ent to mark the oc­ca­sion.

In­stead of the usu­al toast, the Chief Sec­re­tary led the na­tion in prayer.

“As we have this toast, I of­fer a word of prayer on be­half of this na­tion be­cause we can’t do this with­out God.

“At 62 years, I am cer­tain we have done a very good job—a bet­ter job than most in rais­ing a suc­cess­ful coun­try. Six­ty-two years, we are still rel­a­tive­ly young as a coun­try and as a na­tion.”

Be­cause of the on­go­ing strug­gle the is­land is fac­ing with crim­i­nals, with the mur­der toll at a his­toric 21 this year, Au­gus­tine not­ed the coun­try’s strug­gles but al­so recog­nised its progress.

Au­gus­tine said, “At 62 years, we have is­sues that we are not com­ing to terms with. Even as we cel­e­brate to­day, the cel­e­bra­tion is shad­owed by the fact that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of crim­i­nal­i­ty on our is­land and in the coun­try, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get it right.”

He en­cour­aged To­bag­o­ni­ans to set an ex­am­ple for the world. For the first time, Au­gus­tine pub­licly ad­dressed the im­pend­ing changes to the coat of arms, stress­ing the im­por­tance of the de­ci­sion.

He said, “It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to ap­peal to those who are not the de­scen­dants of those en­slaved, to please leave the con­ver­sa­tion for those of us who have in­her­it­ed the trau­ma.”

Au­gus­tine said as the coun­try con­tin­ues to de­colonise its so­ci­ety, it is time to al­so con­sid­er de­colonis­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.