Ven­dors in down­town Port-of-Spain say sales have been much slow­er this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. They are blam­ing the de­cline on the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade to­mor­row.

Asha­ki Pierre, who runs a small sewing shop in Drag Mall, told Guardian Me­dia that sales of her fes­tive na­tion­al clothes have been slow this year. She said, “It’s not as fast as be­fore, like last year, but peo­ple are still buy­ing. Giv­en there is no in­de­pen­dence pa­rade and no fire­works as be­fore, they are buy­ing, but not as be­fore.” She’s now turn­ing her fo­cus to Re­pub­lic Day with the hope that the sales in­crease be­tween the hol­i­days.

An­oth­er ven­dor, who on­ly want­ed to be iden­ti­fied as Kevin, sells chil­dren’s dress­es in red and white on In­de­pen­dence Square. He said, “Nor­mal­ly, this is what we do every year for in­de­pen­dence, but be­cause we don’t have any in­de­pen­dence pa­rade this year, the sales have dropped. It dropped bad. The re­sponse isn’t nice. Every­body is com­plain­ing. We bought the ma­te­r­i­al, and the ma­te­r­i­al is still at home. All that we have right now, no­body is buy­ing.”

How­ev­er, his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh said cit­i­zens should not con­fuse pa­tri­o­tism with na­tion­al­ism.

“Pa­tri­o­tism means love for coun­try, love for com­mu­ni­ty, a po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, love for na­tion. I don’t be­lieve that we should see the can­cel­la­tion of the pa­rade, this one event, as re­flect­ing on our lev­els of pa­tri­o­tism.”

He al­so said the can­cel­la­tion of the pa­rade should not af­fect na­tion­al pride, adding, “I don’t be­lieve there will be a ma­jor im­pact on na­tion­al pride. We have so many oth­er sym­bols that re­flect our in­de­pen­dence and re­flect na­tion­al pride, and re­flect pa­tri­o­tism. We have our coat of arms. We have our na­tion­al birds. We have our mot­to. We have the pledge.”

Teelucks­ingh ad­vised those who re­li­gious­ly at­tend the In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade an­nu­al­ly not to lose that sense of na­tion­al pride but in­stead in­cor­po­rate it in­to their own lives.

He ex­plained, “My ad­vice to them is that they should find ways to trans­fer that pa­tri­o­tism, that love they have for the pa­rade, trans­fer it to their com­mu­ni­ty. Trans­fer it to their neigh­bour­hood. Trans­fer it to their home be­cause a lot of times I see peo­ple not car­ing for their neigh­bour­hood or their com­mu­ni­ty, their bor­ough. They’re deal­ing with the en­vi­ron­ment in a very deroga­to­ry way by dump­ing rub­bish, leav­ing rub­bish on the beach­es. This is what pa­tri­o­tism is about. Keep­ing the en­vi­ron­ment clean. Even our mur­der rate re­flects a low lev­el of pa­tri­o­tism. So we need to al­so look at that to look at the way we treat each oth­er.”

Teelucks­ingh al­so ques­tioned those who found an is­sue with the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to have a Na­tion­al Day of Prayer to­mor­row. He said, “I want to know where are we as a na­tion if a day of prayer could be mocked and dis­missed? And why should we be com­par­ing it to a pa­rade? Some peo­ple even say the day of prayer will not gen­er­ate pa­tri­o­tism, but if we in the day of prayer could have peo­ple from dif­fer­ent re­li­gions and dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­grounds, it shows a lev­el of tol­er­ance. It shows a lev­el of ac­cep­tance.”