PM Manning: Best Village unites TT

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning said the Best Village Trophy Competition was designed from inception to unite Trinidad and Tobago’s various communities and channel people’s energies away from crime and into more positive endeavours.  Addressing yesterday’s launch of  Folk Fair 2003 at the Queen’s Park Savannah, the prime minister declared that this was why his government placed great emphasis on reintroducing and revitalising the competition after it was stopped for six years under its UNC predecessor. Recalling that Best Village started under the nation’s first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, Manning said the competition was more than just creating “readily available avenues and outlets for the talented among us.”  “Programmes like our Best Village Trophy Competition do make for greater peace and tranquility among groups and communities. Another objective is to bring people in communities together and to bring people of different communities into better understanding and more meaningful relations,” he said.

Stressing the importance of dealing with the social dimension of crime, Manning warned that if there was “no outlet for the pent-up energies of individuals and groups in our communities,” those energies could be utilised in various forms of criminal activity. He said it was recognition of this fact that the PNM reintroduced Best Village shortly after it returned to office and enacted legislation which offers financial incentives to the business community whenever they support any aspect of local art. Observing that the country had achieved much in the creation of new music, art and literature, the prime minister said it was government’s intention “to sell more of our local music, art and literature to the world” and “better days” were coming for local artistes. “We are really the world. We are truly its children represented within one lovely nation,” Manning declared.