Af­ter fea­tur­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Coat of Arms for 62 years, the de­pic­tions of Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships: the Ni­na, the Pin­ta and the San­ta Maria, which com­mem­o­rat­ed Colum­bus’ ar­rival in 1498, will be re­moved, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Row­ley an­nounced the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day at the PNM’s spe­cial con­ven­tion to con­sid­er the re­port of the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion re­form com­mit­tee. The coun­try’s Coat of Arms was de­signed in 1962 by a com­mit­tee of cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing late car­ni­val de­sign­er George Bai­ley and artist Car­lyle Chang.

“You see them three Colum­bus boats in the em­blem, they will go. And since we have enough votes in the Par­lia­ment to do it. I can an­nounce now that as soon as the leg­isla­tive ad­just­ment is made, that amend­ment should be made be­fore the 24th of Sep­tem­ber. We are go­ing to re­place Colum­bus’s three ships: the Ni­na, the Pin­ta and the San­ta Maria with the steel­pan.

“And for lo­gis­ti­cal pur­pos­es, that will take place over a six-month pe­ri­od, al­low­ing us to con­sume the sta­tion­ary and oth­er things we have in place and be re­placed by our new in­ten­tion,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

He said the change on the Coat of Arms would be the first in mov­ing away from the coun­try’s colo­nial ties.

“And that should sig­nal that we are on our way to re­mov­ing the colo­nial ves­tiges that we have in our con­sti­tu­tion. And I hope that we start with that and no longer end up be­ing squat­ters on the steps of the Privy Coun­cil be­cause all those who be­lieve that the Privy Coun­cil must al­ways be our Supreme Court one of these days in Eng­land that will take the de­ci­sion to ex­pel us,” the Prime Min­is­ter said to a stand­ing ova­tion at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment comes as the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the re­view of the place­ment of stat­ues, mon­u­ments and sig­nage in T&T is set to take place on Au­gust 28. In 2022, Cab­i­net ap­point­ed a com­mit­tee to look at stat­ues and sig­nage af­ter Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project founder Shaba­ka Kam­bon and oth­er ac­tivists called for the re­moval of the mon­u­ments and change in the way his­to­ry is taught. The is­sue was first raised in 2020.

No ear­ly elec­tion

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­moved any chances of a gen­er­al elec­tion tak­ing place this year. There were ru­mours in po­lit­i­cal cir­cles that the elec­tion was set to be called in No­vem­ber.

“There will be no elec­tion in No­vem­ber. There will be an elec­tion in 2025.

“I just told you to­day that we are aim­ing to have this next con­fer­ence, as of now, pos­si­bly the first week of Oc­to­ber, or even lat­er. That guar­an­tees you that the elec­tion they talk­ing about in No­vem­ber not tak­ing place. And to say that we are do­ing it be­cause it’s an elec­tion time, I told you ear­li­er on, the work that I did ear­li­er on to get to this point took place in 2023,” the Prime Min­is­ter said to more ap­plause and laugh­ter. He de­nied the con­ven­tion was called be­cause “it is elec­tion time.”

The PNM po­lit­i­cal leader called on the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties to put dif­fer­ences aside and unite to help chart a brighter way for­ward for the coun­try through con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

“I want to ap­peal to my par­lia­men­tary col­leagues and all those who have po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions, there are times we have got to come to­geth­er and now is one of those times.”

While call­ing for in­creased po­lit­i­cal uni­ty, Row­ley ques­tioned why the Op­po­si­tion sought to politi­cize the Agri Ex­po, which took place over the week­end at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, by protest­ing. 

The Prime Min­is­ter said the ex­po’s suc­cess was an in­di­ca­tion that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor is fi­nal­ly gath­er­ing mo­men­tum and at­tract­ing more young peo­ple. He said that 60,000 peo­ple at­tend­ed yes­ter­day, while an­oth­er 40,000 were present on Sat­ur­day.