Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th has urged cit­i­zens to “look in­ward” on the na­tion’s 61st an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence. In his in­de­pen­dence day mes­sage, Dr Row­ley out­lined sev­er­al ques­tions, he says, cit­i­zens should ask them­selves, such as; What eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples do we em­brace dai­ly? How do we de­ter­mine right from wrong? Where does in­tegri­ty re­side, in our per­son­al life? As a cit­i­zen do I show re­spect for oth­ers and the law and its reg­u­la­tions? Do I re­spect the rights of my neigh­bours and oth­ers?

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “This coun­try is at a cross­roads in an in­creas­ing­ly more dif­fi­cult world, where every cit­i­zen should now look, in­ward­ly, ask­ing him or her­self some deep­er ques­tions about our very ex­is­tence in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He went fur­ther in say­ing, “Every cit­i­zen recog­nis­es that we must make de­mands of the Gov­ern­ment as we ex­pect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty, from the coun­try’s lead­ers – but at the same time, we al­so ac­cept, as cit­i­zens, some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our per­son­al choic­es as we are col­lec­tive­ly and equal­ly an­swer­able for our in­di­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to the so­ci­ety and the na­tion-state.”

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley al­so ref­er­enced the lat­est Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions which once again saw a 7-7 tie be­tween the PNM and UNC.

“With­in re­cent times, our na­tion has ex­pe­ri­enced some ups and downs, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the men­ace of in­creas­ing lev­els of crime, drugs, and vi­o­lence, along­side the per­son­al,”

Dr Row­ley said the re­sult “may be of­fer­ing us some in­ter­est­ing in­sights in­to the mind­set of some cit­i­zens and, prob­a­bly, the mood of our Re­pub­lic.”

He says it is time move on to the promised leg­is­lat­ed re­forms, which pro­pose to de­volve sig­nif­i­cant as­pects of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty to mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies, cre­at­ing, in ef­fect, greater cit­i­zens’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in our cher­ished de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.