Ryan Ba­choo

A buzz of ex­cite­ment, fresh­ness, and even new­ness could be felt out­side the Red House as Par­lia­ment restart­ed with a grand cer­e­mo­ny on Aber­crom­by Street.

For the first time in two years, there was a pa­rade to mark the re­con­ven­ing of Par­lia­ment with the De­fence Force band lead­ing the way with its mu­sic en­sem­bles.

The pan­dem­ic had di­lut­ed this oc­ca­sion in 2020 and 2021.

On Mon­day, cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors looked through the bars of Wood­ford Square on the op­po­site side of the Red House ea­ger to catch a glimpse of the ac­tion.

Am­bas­sadors and High Com­mis­sion­ers were in­vit­ed to see this arm of T&T's democ­ra­cy at work.

As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Regi­nald Ar­mour greet­ed the me­dia on his way in­to the Par­lia­ment, he gave a big smile, say­ing, "It's a love­ly day."

In­deed it was, the lunchtime sun­bathed down on Port-of-Spain as the De­fence struck up its band.

The pa­rade start­ed at the front of the Hall of Jus­tice and made its way on­to Fred­er­ick Street be­fore turn­ing to­wards Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral and com­plet­ing the square to end at the front of the Par­lia­ment.

As hors­es gal­loped down Aber­crom­by Street, the blue lights of the Pres­i­dent's po­lice es­cort could be seen in the dis­tance slow­ly mak­ing its way to the Par­lia­ment.

Up­on ar­rival, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George joined Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes on the red car­pet to­wards the podi­um.

Af­ter in­spect­ing the guard, the pres­i­dent joined the gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion in­side the par­lia­ment to de­clare the sit­ting open.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia be­fore the restart of Par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris Al-Rawi, said this ses­sion will be an im­por­tant one with lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions due in the com­ing months.

"This is a year of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form so the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion sched­ule and the pieces of law that go along with that are very high on my per­son­al agen­da and cer­tain­ly on the gov­ern­ment's agen­da. I sit as the chair­man of the leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee and I can tell you that there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of law that will be com­ing to the par­lia­ment soon. These are very in­ter­est­ing times. We are al­so look­ing for­ward to the bud­get and the bud­get takes ap­prox­i­mate­ly a month to get done," he said.

On his way in­to the cham­ber, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries added his wish­es for this sit­ting, say­ing, "As we be­gin this par­lia­men­tary sit­ting, I'm hop­ing for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T and that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans rec­og­nize and ho­n­our the oath they've tak­en and al­ways re­mem­ber that we are here serv­ing the peo­ple of T&T and not al­low them­selves to be dragged by the pet­ty pol­i­tics that stymie the progress of this coun­try. That's my hope for this par­lia­men­tary sit­ting."