Abdulah: Envision a better day

Saying many do not share optimism or hope about the future, he listed the issues that the Government seems unable or unwilling to handle. These are crime, economy, health sector, jobs, poverty, inequity and discrimination, industrial relations, education and schools, and corruption.

“In the past 30 years we have used a strategy of changing parties in office when they failed to address, far less resolve, these many issues,” Abdulah related.

“That strategy has now left us in the present state where we do not share hope about the future. This is because none of the changes in governments has resulted in real change. We have tried out, more than once, the two traditional political parties with the same result.

To go back to the one that is now in opposition is truly to go backwards. And the one that is now in government is not taking us forward.” Reflecting on the proverb, “A people without a vision perish”, he said the Government has no vision for TT, while the Opposition’s only vision is to try to re-enter office by opposing the Government even if this hurts citizens, such as the FATCA issue.

He blamed the lack of a shared vision on why much cannot be solved now – crime, corruption and economy - with different sectors of society left with no choice but to pursue their self interest.

“Our optimism is rooted in our faith in the human spirit and our history which is one where through the united struggles of our people we moved ‘out of slavery, through indenture and up to freedom’”.

He said a crisis now exists because neither independence nor the first republic created the economic or governance systems to facilitate our freedom and our sense of ownership and responsibility for the well-being of the nation and its citizens.

“The way out of our predicament is therefore for us to come to the conscious realization that we need to change not only ‘who’ is in power but the very systems of economic and political power.

This requires us to have a ‘revolution of the mind’ that challenges the status quo and lets us to re-imagine the future and see a different TT.

“The MSJ has great confidence that the people of TT have the capacity to re-imagine the future,” Abdulah said. “For our part we will be continuing the process of engaging citizens in their communities - both geographical communities and communities of interest - to listen to what they are saying and to share our Vision of The Second Republic.” He hoped this process will contribute to the “revolution of the mind” to build a movement that is united and conscious of the need for fundamental change.

“We therefore look to 2017 with hope that change is not only necessary but possible in TT in this process of moving out of slavery, through indenture, up to freedom and towards the Second Republic”.