Trinidad and To­ba­go has been urged to demon­strate com­pas­sion and its be­lief in jus­tice, not just lo­cal­ly but on the world stage.

Is­su­ing the call was High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad in his ca­pac­i­ty as a guest preach­er at the Mara­bel­la Pres­by­ter­ian Church yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing his ser­mon, Seep­er­sad said the Christ­mas Sto­ry un­equiv­o­cal­ly demon­strates car­ing, kind­ness and com­pas­sion.

“Be­yond our shores, this Christ­mas, there is a dire need for us to ex­tend our com­pas­sion. We can use so­cial me­dia and call up­on re­gion­al and glob­al lead­ers to con­front, con­demn and coun­ter­act the sit­u­a­tion which is oc­ca­sion­ing may­hem in Gaza. The world can­not turn a blind eye to war crimes if they are be­ing com­mit­ted. How can we stay silent when over 8,600 Pales­tin­ian chil­dren have been killed? Let us, this Christ­mas com­mit to the re-writ­ing of his­to­ry so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions would re­flect on this Christ­mas as the mo­ment when we changed our course,” he said.

He al­so called on lead­ers to demon­strate their com­pas­sion through their ac­tions.

“Com­pas­sion­ate lead­ers build bridges, they do not burn them down, they unite and do not di­vide, they lis­ten to op­pos­ing views and dis­agree re­spect­ful­ly, they in­vite di­a­logue and are re­cep­tive to col­lab­o­ra­tive en­gage­ments in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try and they pri­ori­tise self-re­spect for both coun­try and its cit­i­zens.”

Seep­er­sad said the re­gion and peo­ple have the ca­pac­i­ty to lead as­tute­ly and with com­pas­sion.

“We ac­tu­al­ly have ex­am­ples, in this re­gion of this type of lead­er­ship. Mia Mot­t­ley through her em­pa­thy, peo­ple cen­tred and prac­ti­cal po­si­tions, lead­ing a pop­u­la­tion that is one sixth the size of ours, is now a re­spect­ed glob­al voice. Prime Min­is­ter (Dr Ralph) Gon­salves, lead­ing even a small­er na­tion has shown his ca­pac­i­ty to har­ness com­pas­sion and ci­vil­i­ty. He was proac­tive when at­tempts were made to steal the elec­tions in Guyana, he re­fused to at­tend the Sum­mit of Amer­i­c­as when three re­gion­al lead­ers were ex­clud­ed and he took the lead and fa­cil­i­tat­ed the con­ver­sa­tion which oc­curred on Thurs­day which re­sult­ed in the De­c­la­ra­tion of Ar­gyle. Now there is hope that armed con­flict has been avert­ed,” he said.

Seep­er­sad said it was al­so time for Trinidad and To­ba­go to show it­self on the world stage by tak­ing the lead on mat­ters of prin­ci­ple.

“This place, we call home should be seen as a coun­try gov­erned by ser­vant lead­ers who love and de­fend all cit­i­zens and pro­tect our neigh­bours. In ad­di­tion to be­ing the land of fete, we must be­come the land which re­jects in­jus­tice, in­hu­man­i­ty and in­tol­er­ance.

“We must no longer tol­er­ate calls for us to shut up and be silent? We have to stop at­tack­ing each oth­er and we need to ac­tive­ly utilise our time, tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty and re­sources to proac­tive­ly trans­form our so­cio eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and con­front our myr­i­ad of prob­lems,” he urged.

He added that lead­ers do not have the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ef­fect­ing change as change starts with every­one.