DEREK ACHONG

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes has claimed that the coun­try is still yet to heal from the dam­age caused by the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

Weekes made the com­ment while ad­dress­ing State and re­li­gious lead­ers at the Na­tion­al Day of Prayer at St Patrick's RC Church, New­town, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

"Many trau­ma­tised vic­tims have not re­turned to their for­mer selves and the rip­ple ef­fect of those aw­ful five days are still rear­ing their ug­ly heads," Weekes said as she shared a per­son­al coup sto­ry of her aunt, who was a nun in the Unit­ed King­dom at the time.

Weekes al­so not­ed that not on­ly those who were in­jured, killed or lost prop­er­ty were af­fect­ed.

"Our democ­ra­cy still feels vul­ner­a­ble," Weekes said, as she called on cit­i­zens to pray for a range of na­tion­al is­sues in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty, racism, in­jus­tice, the econ­o­my and COVID-19.

In his ad­dress, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don used the sto­ry of Herod or­der­ing the death of John the Bap­tist to high­light the del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween re­li­gion and the State.

"Democ­ra­cy is a frag­ile thing," Gor­don said.

Re­fer­ring to the at­tempt­ed coup, Gor­don said: "We as a peo­ple woke up dif­fer­ent­ly be­cause what we saw hap­pen­ing with democ­ra­cy."

In his con­tri­bu­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley chose to read Je­re­mi­ah Chap­ter 25 Vers­es 1 to 9.

Ad­dress­ing the coun­try's ef­forts in cop­ing with the pan­dem­ic, Row­ley said: "This is not be­hind us, this is with us. We still have a fu­ture to fear. We still have a fu­ture to hope for."