GILLIAN LUCKY

When the Pres­i­dent speaks we should lis­ten ac­tive­ly, es­pe­cial­ly if, "ac­cord­ing to plan," it would be "the last time that such a priv­i­lege was be­ing af­ford­ed" to the par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual cur­rent­ly hold­ing the high­est po­si­tion in the land.

It would have been fool­ish for any­body to have ex­pect­ed the Pres­i­dent to bat bold­ly out of his crease for al­though this may well be his last "throne speech," the cir­cum­stance did not war­rant a de­par­ture from the con­ven­tion that the Pres­i­dent should nev­er de­scend in­to the realm of pol­i­tics. As should have been an­tic­i­pat­ed by those well ac­quaint­ed with par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure and, most im­por­tant, the pro­vi­sions of our Con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­dent stuck to his script and spoke in the most "pres­i­den­tial" fash­ion. It must be ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the Pres­i­dent is an out­stand­ing aca­d­e­m­ic who does not re­side in an ivory tow­er obliv­i­ous to the con­cerns of the cit­i­zen­ry. In his speech, the Pres­i­dent raised sev­er­al mat­ters that should be of na­tion­al con­cern and sug­gest­ed the ap­proach that ought to be adopt­ed when re­solv­ing these is­sues of state.

Ac­cord­ing to the oath, the Pres­i­dent is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, to the best of his abil­i­ty, to "pre­serve and de­fend the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law" and to de­vote him­self "to the ser­vice and well-be­ing of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go." The Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic had to en­sure that his state­ment on the aus­pi­cious cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of Par­lia­ment was rel­e­vant to the cur­rent so­cio-eco­nom­ic land­scape and tru­ly re­flec­tive of the state of the na­tion. There was no hid­ing the fact that the Pres­i­dent chose his words wise­ly and de­liv­ered pow­er­ful mes­sages on sev­er­al themes. The gold­en thread that ran through­out his dis­course was the im­por­tance of ad­her­ing to the pro­vi­sions of our Con­sti­tu­tion which, if al­lowed to prop­er­ly in­form the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, would lead to the achieve­ment of the high and no­ble prin­ci­ples on which our re­pub­lic is found­ed. The Pres­i­dent urged lead­ers to bet­ter ap­pre­ci­ate the mean­ing of the so­cial con­tract be­tween them­selves and the peo­ple and the fact that the com­mit­ment to rep­re­sent the in­ter­ests of all the peo­ple should not be an emp­ty promise cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for elec­toral con­sump­tion on the cam­paign trail. The mat­ter of equal op­por­tu­ni­ty was raised and the ne­ces­si­ty for mer­i­toc­ra­cy to reign supreme in the con­text of equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty. And the fur­ther point that once equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for all the peo­ple was achieved, then each in­di­vid­ual would have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his suc­cess or fail­ure.

It was this type of in­for­ma­tive analy­sis which is of­ten miss­ing in the speech­es of politi­cians that made the words of the Pres­i­dent even more ap­peal­ing to the ears. We still suf­fer the ill-ef­fects of a brain drain and much more has to be done to stop the ex­o­dus of the wealth of tal­ent that leaves our shores to re­side in for­eign lo­ca­tions. At this crit­i­cal time of our growth, it is im­per­a­tive that we pro­vide a healthy en­vi­ron­ment that en­ables cit­i­zens to reach their high­est po­ten­tial. No cit­i­zen must feel that he is not ap­pre­ci­at­ed or re­spect­ed in his own land. The Pres­i­dent has chal­lenged us to change our cur­rent course of be­com­ing a down­load na­tion and in­stead as­pire, as we have done in the past with the in­ven­tion of the steel pan, to be in­no­va­tors rather than con­sumers. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter mis­in­ter­pret­ed the ob­ser­va­tion, and used our in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion as a di­verse, mul­ti-tal­ent­ed and har­mo­nious peo­ple to re­spect­ful­ly agree to dis­agree with the Pres­i­dent. The ref­er­ence by His Ex­cel­len­cy to the re­cent dis­cov­ery of the Hig­gs bo­son was meant to in­cite our cre­ative and in­tel­lec­tu­al ge­nius, so that we could be a part of this ex­cit­ing time in sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ry.

It is for this rea­son, the Pres­i­dent em­pha­sised that in or­der for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, in­clud­ing the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, to achieve suc­cess, "the in­de­pen­dence of the uni­ver­si­ty must be un­tram­melled and in­de­pen­dent think­ing al­lowed to flour­ish." The Pres­i­dent ex­pressed con­cern about the un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and gave sage ad­vice that zeal must be tem­pered with ad­her­ence to due process.

The fact that no sig­nif­i­cant strides have been made in re­duc­ing crime is a great dis­tur­bance to all law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and it is hoped that Min­is­ter Warn­er, who has al­ready hit the ground run­ning, will lis­ten to those who are com­pe­tent to as­sist him in the mam­moth task that he has been as­signed. Our chal­lenges as a rel­a­tive­ly young na­tion are not go­ing to be over­come overnight, but if we re­main with open minds, act­ing at all times in good con­science, then we will have rea­son to cel­e­brate way be­yond our 50 years of in­de­pen­dence.