Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Quot­ing the adage “Life be­gins at 60,” To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is call­ing on cit­i­zens to breathe new life in­to the dream that led to T&T’s in­de­pen­dence in 1962.

In his In­de­pen­dence Day speech yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said be­fore the birth of the na­tion, that dream stirred in the hearts of cit­i­zens who ag­i­tat­ed for change from the coun­try’s colo­nial rule.

“Some have been cham­pi­oning the idea that life be­gins at 60. If so, we are at a crit­i­cal junc­ture where we can strive to start again, we can breathe new life in­to the dream that trans­formed us from a colony to a coun­try of promise,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said the dream was based on the be­lief that no out­side force could seek the in­ter­ests of cit­i­zens bet­ter than Trin­bag­o­ni­ans could.

He urged cit­i­zens to re­mem­ber that when they serve the coun­try, they serve them­selves.

“I urge every Trin­bag­on­ian to recom­mit to the vi­sion of the first pa­tri­ots who be­lieved that to­geth­er, much could be achieved for us as a peo­ple. Reignite the love and ded­i­ca­tion that may have grown cold for our beloved coun­try,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said by stok­ing the fire once more, T&T could be pushed far­ther than ever.

As he re­called no­table events in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, Au­gus­tine said cit­i­zens must be brave enough to break moulds and over­come the chal­lenges that come with de­vel­op­ment.

How­ev­er, he said as the coun­try marks its Di­a­mond Ju­bilee, cit­i­zens should not shy away from in­tro­spec­tion.

“What type of coun­try should we be af­ter 60 years of in­de­pen­dence? Six­ty is an age of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­tu­ri­ty and a strong sense of self. With six decades un­der the belt, un­shak­able con­fi­dence, and wis­dom ev­i­dent from the years of ex­pe­ri­ence, it is my gen­uine hope that this is the pos­ture we will adopt as a coun­try and an is­land who have been blessed to ob­serve a di­a­mond ju­bilee.”

Au­gus­tine said the coun­try must al­so ex­am­ine whether all of its cit­i­zens feel in­de­pen­dent. He ques­tioned whether some, based on creed or ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, feel more “re­strict­ed” and de­pen­dent than oth­ers.

“The dream was not sole­ly to at­tain the pow­er to gov­ern our­selves, but to do so in such a man­ner that it makes a marked dif­fer­ence In the lives of our cit­i­zens, it was to build a Trinidad and To­ba­go, where eq­ui­ty trumps elit­ism, a twin-is­land na­tion that pro­tects the dig­ni­ty of all re­sid­ing with­in its bor­ders,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said by ask­ing these dif­fi­cult ques­tions, cit­i­zens can gain a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the ex­pe­ri­ences of their com­pa­tri­ots.