Matu­ra ac­tivist Suzan Lakhan-Bap­tiste has been her­ald­ed by news gi­ant CNN as an in­ter­na­tion­al hero­ine for her self­less cam­paign of pro­tect­ing leather-back tur­tles.CNN gush­es over this de­vot­ed Tri­ni la­dy with a pen­chant for dili­gent late night beach walks to over­see the wel­fare of this en­dan­gered species. Lakhan-Bap­tiste is a cru­sad­ing con­ser­va­tion­ist who has avert­ed the slaugh­ter of hun­dreds of tur­tles, says CNN, in short-list­ing her for a pos­si­ble glob­al ho­n­our.

Has she ever re­ceived a na­tion­al award? Lakhan-Bap­tiste replies in the neg­a­tive and then gen­tly guides the con­ver­sa­tion to an im­pend­ing in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial grant to aid her pa­tri­ot­ic cause. I didn't both­er to ask how she felt to be ac­claimed by an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­spect­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion–and ig­nored by her coun­try's lead­ers. But her graph­ic ex­am­ple rich­ly il­lus­trates the bur­den­some is­sues that re­volve around the cri­sis of con­fi­dence in the an­nu­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of na­tion­al awards, a rit­u­al­is­tic sym­bol of our po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence. In­deed, for var­i­ous rea­sons this year's In­de­pen­dence Day dec­o­ra­tions were among the most hol­low and point­less, so out of sync with na­tion­al as­pi­ra­tions that they failed to res­onate with most of an ex­as­per­at­ed na­tion.

To a young, emerg­ing so­ci­ety, the dis­burse­ment of na­tion­al awards should serve at least two vi­tal pur­pos­es–to ho­n­our and cel­e­brate es­sen­tial con­trib­u­tors and to in­spire and en­thuse oth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly youths rich with po­ten­tial and am­bi­tion. But there is na­tion­al be­fud­dle­ment when, say, Dr Cuth­bert Joseph re-emerges af­ter two decades as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to cop the sec­ond high­est ho­n­our, this time as "His Ex­cel­len­cy" the am­bas­sador, and un­der the rubric of "na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment." Sure­ly, the col­lec­tive na­tion­al am­bi­tion would have been bet­ter served if Joseph's ex­haus­tive achieve­ments since his rou­tine run as a min­is­ter were care­ful­ly de­tailed and made rel­e­vant to us. In the ab­sence of such, cyn­ics would in­evitably run wild with the charge that Joseph was re­ward­ed for sup­pos­ed­ly be­ing a loy­al and long-serv­ing hand­maid­en of the rul­ing po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In­deed, such a de­pic­tion has long dogged the awards sys­tem, in the process un­der­min­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and di­lut­ing the wor­thi­ness of the dec­o­ra­tions around the necks of de­served re­cip­i­ents. The awards sys­tem sure­ly de­serves an ur­gent and crit­i­cal over­haul to en­gen­der fresh rel­e­vance to a young na­tion in need of ex­em­plars and in­spi­ra­tional mod­el cit­i­zens. A re­newed think­ing and ap­proach must guide the restora­tion of the sys­tem to its orig­i­nal core pur­pose and func­tion. The sys­tem fails T&T by its con­vo­lut­ed process that side­steps com­mu­ni­ty con­trib­u­tors and area achiev­ers, in favour of promi­nent fig­ures, some of whom are ho­n­oured mere­ly for stay­ing at their paid pub­lic of­fices for decades.

Sev­er­al fig­ures with lit­tle name recog­ni­tion–and even less as­so­ci­a­tion with mod­ern T&T–have been draped with top awards.

How, in an as­pir­ing knowl­edge-based so­ci­ety, so few aca­d­e­mics, thinkers and so­cial sci­en­tists mer­it ac­co­lades? What about the en­er­gy pi­o­neers in the 100th year of the in­dus­try in T&T? Where are the pri­vate sec­tor pil­lars whose en­tre­pre­neur­ial acu­men has helped to build our coun­try? What about com­mu­ni­ty work­ers, self­less vol­un­teers and oth­er good Samar­i­tans who have been crit­i­cal an­chors of post-in­de­pen­dence T&T? How about the com­mon nuts or dou­bles ven­dor, who nev­er sought the aid or largesse of the State but has seen chil­dren grad­u­ate with ho­n­ours from uni­ver­si­ty? Why aren't more pro­fes­sion­als sin­gled out for com­men- da­tion? How, for ex­am­ple, about the doc­tors who reat­tached the arm of the teen vic­tim of the boat­ing ac­ci­dent?

Wouldn't col­leagues be mo­ti­vat­ed if plucky and coura­geous of­fi­cers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices are cel­e­brat­ed? Aren't there more dis­tin­guished nurs­es and teach­ers who mer­it na­tion­al ac­claim?

The bru­tal re­al­i­ty is that the awards sys­tem is quick­ly sink­ing in­to a pedes­tri­an, for­get­table af­fair, sub­vert­ed by por­tray­als of par­ti­san­ship and crony­ism. Trans­paren­cy of the process, in­clud­ing rev­e­la­tion of mem­bers of the awards com­mit­tee, must be cru­cial as­pects of a re­wo­ven scheme. The cur­rent prime min­is­te­r­i­al as­sent–which in­cludes his right of ve­to–must al­so be dis­pensed with. More than any­one else, the Prime Min­is­ter has a solemn re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in eras­ing the stig­ma of clois­tered pa­tron­age and pay­back and in­still­ing a na­tion­al­is­tic, non-par­ti­san per­sona. It is a mat­ter he should ad­dress dur­ing his week­ly cross-coun­try talk shops.

The fail­ure to prop­er­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress and re­form the awards sys­tem would be to per­mit it to with­er on the vine and to vir­tu­al­ly wreck an im­por­tant form of na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, a vi­tal as­pect of our na­tion­hood, an ex­pres­sion of our self-be­lief.

The na­tion­al awards sys­tem must be made to match the im­per­a­tives of a mod­ern so­ci­ety.