In her In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar posed a chal­leng­ing ques­tion: af­ter more than six decades of self-gov­ern­ment, how much longer can Trinidad and To­ba­go blame its short­com­ings on its colo­nial past?

On Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 4, more than 1.2 bil­lion Hin­dus world­wide will cel­e­brate the fes­ti­val “Kr­ish­na Janam Asht­mi,” al­so known as Asht­mi Rohni, Shree Jayan­ti Kr­ish­nash­ta­mi and Goku­lash­ta­mi, with great zeal and fer­vour.

Six­ty-four years af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tained po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence from Britain through the lead­er­ship of Pre­mier Dr Er­ic Williams and the sup­port of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Rudranath Capildeo, it is fit­ting that we re­flect on our na­tion­al jour­ney and as­sess how far we have come.

In­de­pen­dence means more than free­dom from ex­ter­nal con­trol. It places up­on a na­tion the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ing it­self, man­ag­ing its re­sources, pro­tect­ing its cit­i­zens and ad­dress­ing the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, le­gal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges it faces. Gov­ern­ments are elect­ed to con­front these prob­lems re­gard­less of how they orig­i­nat­ed. They ex­er­cise au­thor­i­ty over na­tion­al bor­ders and in­sti­tu­tions and are ac­count­able for what oc­curs with­in them un­der the rule of law.

Mon­day’s In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade, af­ter a year with­out such, will see Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in a rare cel­e­bra­to­ry mo­ment, to­geth­er—re­spec­tive ail­ments tem­porar­i­ly shelved.

Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not build a mod­ern democ­ra­cy while re­main­ing trapped in the po­lit­i­cal habits of the past.

We are a young na­tion in syn­co­pa­tion, shift­ing from strong beats of progress to off­beats of po­lit­i­cal and racist mis­chief, then mov­ing again with mo­men­tum, chip­ping to pan, shak­ing waist to tas­sa, in this land of en­ter­prise, mau­vais langue and shid­iots talk­ing racist and po­lit­i­cal non­sense to ma­nip­u­late and di­vide. But when the tribes meet in pa­n­yards, bod­ies move in tan­dem to scin­til­lat­ing mu­sic; no­body cares about the race of the per­son next to them. And on J’Ou­vert morn, peo­ple of all eth­nic­i­ties, un­fet­tered, faces mud-cov­ered, play them­selves, roll and wine, mock­ing mind­ben­ders, and po­lit­i­cal pre­tenders who mess with their heads. That’s re­al cul­tur­al in­de­pen­dence.

The young moth­er be­came in­creas­ing­ly fear­ful. She be­lieved the neigh­bours want­ed to steal her ba­by. She no longer want­ed any­one near her child and even re­fused vis­its from fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's (THA) de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate more than 1,000 work­ers em­ployed un­der its short-term pub­lic works pro­gramme rais­es se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial con­cerns that de­serve clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion.

In­de­pen­dence week is an ide­al time to in­vite cit­i­zens to em­brace a broad­er sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and a deep­er per­spec­tive on na­tion-build­ing and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

Not for the first time in its 70-year his­to­ry, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) finds it­self con­fronting a se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal chal­lenge. The ques­tion is, how­ev­er, whether Trinidad and To­ba­go's longest-serv­ing and tra­di­tion­al­ly most re­silient po­lit­i­cal par­ty can weath­er the cur­rent storm as it has done be­fore, or does it now face a deep­er and more con­se­quen­tial de­cline.

This week’s vis­it by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley to Venezuela should give the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment cause to re­flect on the state of its own re­la­tion­ship with our clos­est South Amer­i­can neigh­bour.