TT not an African State

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO is not an African State, said Erica Williams-Connell, daughter of this country’s first Prime Minister, the late Dr Eric Williams. “The Trinidad and Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it seeks to create the impression, or to allow others to act under the delusion, that the country is an African society.” Speaking at the fourth annual Emancipation dinner hosted by National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) at the Ballroom of the Cascadia Hotel and Conference Centre in St Ann’s, on Saturday night, Williams-Connell declared this country as a multi-racial society.

Borrowing those famous words spoken by her father on the eve of our nation’s Independence in 1962, Williams-Connell said: “there can be no mother Africa, there can be no mother India.” She stated: “A nation, like an individual, can have only one mother. The only mother we recognise is mother Trinidad and Tobago and a mother cannot discriminate between her children.” Williams-Connell said the public has seen the increasing racial polarisation that currently exists in Trinidad and Tobago, with the two major ethnic groups both jockeying for position in an increasingly divided and diverse society. She added: “There are many who believe that, in terms of this aspect of our national life at least, we are significantly worse off today than previously.” Addressing an audience that included Prime Minister Patrick Manning, Williams-Connell said polls done locally told of a public that believed local politicians were racially dividing the country with their pronouncements.