Ak­ile Si­mon

Dis­ap­point­ed and dis­heart­ened. These sen­ti­ments were echoed yes­ter­day by many peo­ple who at­tend­ed the 47th an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade, south of Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. For the third time, the pa­rade took place on the streets. Yes­ter­day was the first time that the pa­rade was held near Memo­r­i­al Park, and it was short­ened. The pa­rade last­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes. In the past, the event usu­al­ly last­ed an hour. Sev­er­al things did not seem right, and did not go down well with mem­bers of the pub­lic, who lined the streets, as usu­al, to get a close-up and per­son­al view of the pa­rade.

The change in the tra­di­tion­al route was an­nounced a few weeks ago by the De­fence Force, who said it was ex­pect­ed to be "peo­ple friend­ly." But it was far from that. Too many peo­ple left the area dis­ap­point­ed at what they had seen. The ex­pec­ta­tions of the army ap­peared to be the op­po­site. Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards did not in­spect the troops, but on­ly took a pres­i­den­tial salute in front of the NCC stands, op­po­site Memo­r­i­al Park.

The pa­rade be­gan on Keate Street, pro­ceed­ed east then up Char­lotte Street, and across the front of the Sa­van­nah. The K-9 and mount­ed branch units, tra­di­tion­al favourites with the crowd, failed to show, ex­cept for a few hors­es which formed part of the Pres­i­dent's mount­ed es­cort.

Many left the pa­rade ground won­der­ing what had re­al­ly hap­pened. "This is the worst pa­rade I have ever at­tend­ed in years. I mean, where did the planes go?" a man said as he tucked his mi­ni red, white and black flag in­to his bag and left the area. Dur­ing the fly-past, an aer­i­al dis­play of mil­i­tary air­craft, Pres­i­dent Richards, as well as many dig­ni­taries, ap­peared con­fused as from which di­rec­tion the air­craft were ex­pect­ed to come. With a con­fused look on his face, Richards con­stant­ly looked in sev­er­al di­rec­tions, hop­ing to see the air­craft. Two planes were the first to fly over the pa­rade ground. Five min­utes lat­er, along came two he­li­copters which were lat­er fol­lowed by two more chop­pers from the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit. Sev­er­al large trees around the pa­rade route made it very dif­fi­cult for spec­ta­tors to view the air­craft.

"If they had left the pa­rade in the Sa­van­nah as be­fore, we would have seen every­thing. Look at them dotish trees block­ing up all the planes," said a vis­i­bly-up­set Ja­son Joseph, mo­ments be­fore he left the area with his four chil­dren. Nev­er­the­less, the of­fi­cers, dressed in their neat­ly-pressed cer­e­mo­ni­al uni­forms, braved the scorch­ing sun and marched past the pa­rade grounds to the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my, St James Bar­racks. De­spite mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices putting their best foot for­ward as they passed their Com­man­der-in-Chief, Pres­i­dent Richards, the T&T De­fence Force ap­peared to be the on­ly unit which drew ap­plause. The crowd went in­to a fren­zy when a fe­male sol­dier, armed with a self-load­ing ri­fle (SLR) drove by in a mil­i­tary back­hoe. Her pos­ture won the hearts of on­look­ers, as she manned the pol­ished ve­hi­cle which formed part of the Reg­i­ment's me­chan­i­cal unit, along the route.