Shas­tri Boodan

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day was ho­n­oured on Sat­ur­day by the To­ba­go Cir­cuit of the Na­tion­al Evan­gel­i­cal Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Faith un­der the pa­tron­age of His Grace Arch­bish­op Glen­roy Jack.

Pan­day told the gath­er­ing at the Rovanel’s Re­sort and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre that he has not giv­en up hope to see a na­tion unit­ed re­gard­less of eth­nic and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences.

“So that we can be­come the great na­tion that God in­tend­ed us to be.” he said.

Pan­day said the name Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist is unique to T&T as it is the on­ly coun­try to have a pub­lic hol­i­day in its ho­n­our.

The for­mer PM al­so gave an his­tor­i­cal ac­count of the decades of strug­gles of the Shouter Bap­tist move­ment to gain recog­ni­tion.

He said his ad­min­is­tra­tion 1996-2001 al­so gave recog­ni­tion to per­sons of the Or­isha faith through the pass­ing of the Or­isha Mar­riage Act that le­galised Or­isha mar­riages in T&T.

He said the Or­ishas were treat­ed in the same man­ner as the Hin­dus and Mus­lims un­der the British colo­nial gov­ern­ment whose aim was to di­vide and rule the na­tion for the sake of pow­er.

Pan­day lat­er told Guardian Me­dia that T&T is no clos­er to achiev­ing the uni­ty he dreams of be­cause the con­sti­tu­tion is caus­ing the dif­fer­ences with peo­ple. He said un­less con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form takes place dis­crim­i­na­tion would al­ways con­tin­ue.

Pan­day al­so said he has no prob­lem with a name change of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port once the fa­cil­i­ty is op­er­at­ed with ef­fi­cient­ly.