The annual granting of national awards is one of the few areas of public affairs in T&T that calls for the involvement of the country's three top office holders:
�2 The nation's highest office holder, His Excellency the President confers the awards, signs the instrument of the award and hosts the traditional Independence evening ceremony;
�2 The awards are conferred on the advice of the Prime Minister, T&T's second highest office holder, who has the right to accept, reject or add to the list received from the National Awards Committee
�2 The National Awards Committee, which is headed by the Chief Justice, the country's third highest office holder, oversees the process of granting the awards, collecting the nominations, investigating the nominees and submitting a short list to the Prime Minister.
The involvement of the three top office holders–and the fact that they are issued in the name of the President, but on the advice of the Prime Minister–is a signal that the awards are at one and the same time both national and political, but not partisan.The awards are meant to single out and honour the best of us and by doing so provide a benchmark of achievement that provides both for inspiration and aspiration by other members of the society.
While there are four categories and ten classes of National Awards, there is a definite unity of purpose in these Independence Day honours in that they all, in one form or another, are meant to recognise service to the country or the community, rather than service to one's self, family or one's ethic, religious or class grouping.
The message of these national honours–which is especially important in a country as cosmopolitan and complex as T&T–is that contribution to national development, by service to the nation, will be recognised and its recipients elevated above ordinary people, whose focus may simply be on individual or family aggrandisement.By honouring service to the country–in whatever way that is measured or defined–the Independence Day awards have become an extremely important symbol of what is necessary to build a truly great nation.
Subliminally, the awards promote the idea, which is wondrous in its simplicity, that service to this nation that most of us call home is more crucial to its development than the selfish grasping after money that some have placed at the centre of their existence...unless, of course, that money is given back to the country by acts of philanthropy.
Traditionally, these awards have always been typified by strict secrecy–as the honours have always been kept under wraps until the embargoed list is released to the media on the day of the honours–and by consulting with the proposed recipients before any announcement is made. Such consultation serves to prevent the embarrassing spectacle of an intended recipient publicly refusing the honour.
If what has been reported on this issue so far is accurate, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar certainly erred in breaching the confidentiality of the process and by not ensuring that former Prime Minister Patrick Manning was properly consulted before her announcement last week.This certainly is a departure from the way this matter has been handled in the past.
If, on the other hand, the Prime Minister's decision to recommend Mr Manning and former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday to receive the nation's highest award was meant to recognise their contributions to the nation's development, then it may be a sign of her political maturity–however badly it was handled.