Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates its 58th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence to­day un­der some dark clouds—COVID-19 and the spec­tre of race which con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion fol­low­ing the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

In an un­usu­al break from the norm, Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes has used the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage to ad­dress how, “the Gen­er­al Elec­tion 2020 flipped Trinidad and To­ba­go over and ex­posed what can be de­scribed as its ug­ly un­der­bel­ly.”

The elec­tion and its out­come, Pres­i­dent Weekes re­called, re­sult­ed in “vit­ri­olic racist rants, com­plete with the most foul lan­guage.”

T&T has in its na­tion­al an­them the phrase “where every creed and race finds and equal place.” But the coun­try re­mains as di­vid­ed along racial lines to­day as it was when it at­tained in­de­pen­dence in 1962.

Our first Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, sought to warn back then about the need for uni­ty, telling the na­tion in 1962 “... democ­ra­cy is but a hol­low mock­ery and a gi­gan­tic fraud which is based on a rul­ing group’s dom­i­na­tion [of] slaves or helots or fel­la­heen or sec­ond class cit­i­zens or show­ing in­tol­er­ance to oth­ers be­cause of con­sid­er­a­tions of race, colour, creed, na­tion­al ori­gin, pre­vi­ous con­di­tions of servi­tude or oth­er ir­ra­tional­i­ty.”

This coun­try is al­ways proud of the ‘rain­bow na­tion,’ de­scrip­tion be­stowed on us by South African Arch­bish­op Desmond Tu­tu. But on this In­de­pen­dence Day, we need to ask our­selves and our politi­cians if we re­al­ly re­spect the racial her­itage of this twin-is­land na­tion? Do we see each oth­er as hu­man be­ings or do we see eth­nic­i­ty and race when we look at each oth­er? As we re­flect on what in­de­pen­dence means to us, every­one needs to re­flect on what Dr Williams said 58 years ago: “Democ­ra­cy means free­dom of wor­ship for all and the sub­or­di­na­tion of the right of any race to the over­rid­ing right of the hu­man race.”

In this time of COVID-19, let us al­so re­flect on our na­tion­al watch­words, ‘Dis­ci­pline, pro­duc­tion and tol­er­ance,’ and re­mem­ber the les­son that Dr Williams tried to in­still in us.

Let us as a coun­try use this ob­ser­vance, as low keyed as it is due to COVID-19, to look in­ward and re­flect on whether we are mod­el cit­i­zens com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go or whether we en­cour­age the things that di­vide us and de­stroy the per­cep­tion that we are a ‘rain­bow na­tion’ by what we say and do. Ques­tions we must ask our­selves in this process are whether we are in­cul­cat­ing in our chil­dren the val­ues re­quired to build a na­tion and do who hold pow­er have the best in­ter­est of T&T T at heart.

To­day is the day to re­flect on this be­cause the road ahead is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult and all of Trinidad and To­ba­go will need to stand unit­ed and work to­geth­er to bring us out of the de­spair cre­at­ed by COVID-19, which has brought un­told so­cio-eco­nom­ic hard­ship on us and many oth­er coun­tries.

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence Day Trinidad and To­ba­go.