Cherisse Moe

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is call­ing on all cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of race, colour or creed, to live to­geth­er as one. Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the call while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at yes­ter­day's Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cer­e­mo­ny, at Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain. Dressed in yel­low African garb, with a bright green head­piece, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a pre­req­ui­site for any suc­cess­ful and uni­fied na­tion was for its peo­ple to be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to "the col­lec­tive whole." She said this year's cel­e­bra­tions sought to "reawak­en" the spir­it of lib­er­ty. She said: "I am not speak­ing about de­nial of her­itage or the sup­pres­sion of iden­ti­ty," she said. "Rather, 'I be­long here,' must echo with con­vic­tion from the lips of every cit­i­zen. 'I have a valu­able part to play in the de­vel­op­ment of T&T,' must be the sen­ti­ment and stance of every cit­i­zen."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said eman­ci­pa­tion "set in train" the ar­du­ous jour­ney to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, in­de­pen­dence and the build­ing of an egal­i­tar­i­an so­ci­ety and as such there was no rea­son to cre­ate "ar­ti­fi­cial bor­ders" around T&T's di­verse cul­tur­al her­itage. "We must jeal­ous­ly pro­tect the free­doms for which our fore­fa­thers have sac­ri­ficed," she said. "For many of them, lib­er­ty came at the price of their own lives....We must work dili­gent­ly to­geth­er, to do right, to pro­tect com­mon in­ter­ests and en­sure peace and pros­per­i­ty for all." The theme of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions al­so com­mem­o­rat­ed the 40th an­niver­sary of the black pow­er rev­o­lu­tion in T&T, which Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed as a "sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone" in the na­tion's his­to­ry.

"Gov­ern­ment has re­cent­ly recog­nised the ef­forts of a cen­tral fig­ure of the 1970s move­ment, for his con­tri­bu­tion to the peo­ple of T&T," the Prime Min­is­ter said. "I speak of none oth­er than Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship mem­ber, Chief Ser­vant Makan­daal Daa­ga, who is now our Cari­com Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­naire. "I salute you, Am­bas­sador Daa­ga." Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ded­i­cat­ed this year's theme to the peo­ple of Haiti, who, she said, were still strug­gling to re­cov­er from the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake of Jan­u­ary 12. Not­ing that Haiti was the first colo­nial ter­ri­to­ry to abol­ish slav­ery, she said Haitians should be praised for their courage and de­ter­mi­na­tion. "Their war of lib­er­a­tion great­ly in­flu­enced a tidal wave of ac­tion in the Caribbean, which even­tu­al­ly led to free­dom for the en­slaved Africans," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

"I stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them as they over­come yet an­oth­er chal­lenge to their lib­er­ty." Af­ter Per­sad Bisses­sar's speech, cit­i­zens were treat­ed to Ein­tou Springer's pro­duc­tion, ti­tled Free­dom Morn­ing Come, as well as the pop­u­lar Can­boulay pro­ces­sion. Scores of men, women and chil­dren, dressed in colour­ful African at­tire par­tic­i­pat­ed in yes­ter­day's cel­e­bra­tions. Many on­look­ers, al­so in eth­nic wear, braved the mid-morn­ing sun to wit­ness the cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions through­out the streets of the cap­i­tal city.

Po­lice of­fi­cers were on hand en­sur­ing that all went ac­cord­ing to plan. A num­ber of se­nior state and gov­ern­ment of­fi­icals at­tend­ed the ob­ser­vances.