We are coming for you

TWENTY-FOUR hours after saying police knew who were behind the spate of kidnappings in Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister Patrick Manning warned the criminal elements “We are coming for you”. Addressing Emancipation Day celebrations at the Queen’s Park Savannah yesterday, the Prime Minister declared: “We are coming for the criminals. Those whose intention it is to sully the good name of our country by embracing and adopting as their vocation crime and kidnapping, we are coming for you.” Manning also shared sentiments expressed previously by Planning Minister Dr Keith Rowley in Laventille, about the number of homes in the country with absentee parents and where children grow up without respect for the rule of law or basic knowledge of right and wrong. The Prime Minister said it was not enough that “every generation blames the one before” and it was high time that the entire society takes the bull by the horns. Manning said while some things were “definitely wrong” in TT, the country remains “a land of promise.”

Reflecting upon the significance of Emancipation, Manning observed:  “As we journey into the new century, the shackles that confront us now are not the whips and the chains that bound those aspirant slaves and many others over the dark period of slavery. Indeed they are psychological inhibitions that are devised from that age. It matters not whether we are African, Chinese, Indian, Caucasian. Among our most important challenges remains the liberation of our minds.” He added, “There can be no letting up in our commitment to match our quest for enhanced individual freedoms and opportunities” and “elimination of prejudices of the kind that stood in the way of our ancestors and forebears.”

Manning also said prior to TT’s independence from Britain, the British viewed the country as a “curious experiment” with African slaves and indentureds of various ethnicities. The Prime Minister said today TT “is no longer a massive social and political experiment” but has “emerged as a success story.” He challenged the population to hold fast to the vision of creating a developed society and warned that such a society would not be realised “if we do not comport ourselves properly.” Noting that traditional barriers to progress were coming down, the Prime Minister declared: “We must believe in ourselves. We can make it if we try. Men and the State must act together. It is all about TT.” In his brief remarks, chairman of the Emancipation Support Committee Kafra Kambon slammed attempts to commercialise Emancipation celebrations in TT, warning its significance would be lost if that happened.