‘Short-term gain a national sin’

PEOPLE’S ADDICTION to short-term pleasures instead of long-term commitment to hard work is the “greatest national sin” in Trinidad and Tobago today. This was the declaration yesterday from Prime Minister Patrick Manning as he addressed Shouter Baptist Liberation Day celebrations at Maloney African Lands.  The Prime Minister said despite the passage of time between emancipation and contemporary life, people in TT show signs that they are not completely free. “A man who spends all his time looking at work rather than doing it, is not free. He does not recognise that freedom carries with it the concomitant of responsibility. It is this quality of pleasure for the moment and the absence of the ability to endure which may be our greatest national sin,” he declared.

Manning lamented that in TT today, there are many citizens “who know the right thing but who stand aside from the issues of the day, preferring to be the so-called silent majority.” The Prime Minister said a nation cannot be built “unless we are willing to be witnesses. “To be a witness is to show by word and deed all that you believe. There is no way that we can build a church or indeed a nation unless we are willing to be witnesses.  Independence and our republican status has given us both strength and power to be witnesses for the right,” Manning declared. Addressing celebrations at Orange Grove Lands, the Prime Minister said responsibility must be factored into the national discourse because “this is far too much a vain and greedy society.

“Because of greed and vanity, many of us have no love, no joy, no peace,” he lamented. Manning wondered whether parents were being exemplars of “gentleness and goodness” to their children, saying these virtues were more important today than ever before. Speaking at Port-of-Spain City Hall, the Prime Minister said people must never dismiss TT as “a place of no consequence” because the nation has the strength to overcome any challenge which faces it and be “the rock about which the psalmist speaks.” Manning also called upon the Church to do all in its power to help young people from falling through the cracks and into a life of crime.