Many com­pare Trinidad & To­ba­go to oth­er coun­tries in an ef­fort to sup­port their point of view. Trinidad & To­ba­go how­ev­er, is unique. Our his­to­ry is dif­fer­ent from most and our so­cial com­po­si­tion is com­plex. It is that com­plex­i­ty that makes it dif­fi­cult to man­age the af­fairs of Trinidad & To­ba­go with­out sec­tors of our so­ci­ety cry­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion.

The mix of cul­tures and race that per­vades our land was ide­al for the colo­nial rulers as it al­lowed for sep­a­ra­tion among the work­ing class which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the abil­i­ty to man­age the mass­es with­out con­cert­ed ef­forts to build con­sen­sus on what is best for the mass­es. Af­ter in­de­pen­dence, the ef­fort to build a na­tion was eas­i­er said than done.

Many will agree that Trinidad & To­ba­go can­not progress ag­gres­sive­ly or reach its fullest po­ten­tial with a di­vid­ed peo­ple. The prob­lem has been that few if any are will­ing to con­front the re­al­i­ties that an­chor such di­vi­sive­ness. Cos­met­i­cal­ly one can pro­nounce that here every creed and race find an equal place with­out at­tempt­ing to in­ves­ti­gate the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of such a state­ment. While it may be easy for every race to fit in equal­ly the same can­not be said for every creed.

A creed is de­scribed as a state­ment of be­lief; some de­scribe it as a state­ment of faith that de­scribes the be­liefs shared by a re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty. In Trinidad & To­ba­go many Catholics and Chris­tians be­lieve in the Nicene Creed, which speaks to a be­lief in God and Christ as the Son of God and God, Mus­lims de­clare the "sha­ha­da", or tes­ti­mo­ny: "I bear wit­ness that there is no God but Al­lah, and that Muham­mad is His mes­sen­ger," Hin­duism, the re­li­gion of the Hin­dus is the prod­uct of the seers of the Vedas, de­vel­oped over the years by the teach­ings of many sa­cred books and men and be­lieves kar­ma (reap­ing what one sows) as one of its fun­da­men­tal doc­trines. In his book "All about Hin­duism" by Sri Swa­mi Sivanan­da he in­di­cates that Hin­dus be­lieve that it takes births af­ter births to reap the fruits of one's Kar­mas.

What is very clear is that there are fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in re­li­gious creeds and the at­tempt to see them as equal is disin­gen­u­ous at best. It is be­cause of these dif­fer­ences, at­tempts to forge a na­tion from the love of lib­er­ty re­main elu­sive. Pol­i­tics must stay away from em­brac­ing re­li­gion in any and all forms. To­ken hol­i­days and ec­u­meni­cal ser­vices can be seen as po­lit­i­cal­ly play­ing with the creed of many re­li­gions.

The du­ty of the politi­cian must be to en­sure that all re­li­gions and races en­joy sim­i­lar lev­els of re­li­gious lib­er­ty that does not in­fringe on the lib­er­ties and rights of all of the na­tion's cit­i­zens. If cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go were to leave their re­li­gious con­vic­tions out­side of the pol­i­tics, it may be much eas­i­er to dis­pas­sion­ate­ly de­vel­op sys­tems, laws, op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures, in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and a new vi­sion for our coun­try.

It is in at­tempt­ing to please the var­i­ous sec­tors of so­ci­ety by em­brac­ing re­li­gion un­der the guise of equal­i­ty that one finds great dif­fi­cul­ty and the per­pet­u­a­tion of bi­as­es that are in­her­ent­ly part of the core creeds of the many var­i­ous re­li­gions that ex­ists in Trinidad & To­ba­go.

There is no get­ting away from the need to re­move re­li­gion from pol­i­tics un­pop­u­lar as it may be. The chal­lenges that this na­tion face are many. We are un­pre­pared for any large scale nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, our in­fra­struc­ture are un­der­de­vel­oped as we sup­ply reg­u­lar to on­ly about thir­ty per­cent of our pop­u­la­tion, our road­ways and in­ad­e­quate and in a poor state and most im­por­tant­ly we do not have na­tion­al "buy in" to a strate­gic di­rec­tion for the coun­try over the next ten to fif­teen years.

The present gov­ern­ment and many be­fore, strug­gle with do­ing "that which is best" for the coun­try and pleas­ing those that fund po­lit­i­cal par­ties. All of these chal­lenges de­mand a sin­cere, dis­pas­sion­ate ap­proach to gov­er­nance that looks away from race, re­li­gion and po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

We must draw on the tal­ents of all our peo­ple re­gard­less of their creed and work to­geth­er to­wards build­ing a Na­tion for­ti­fied with won­der­ful peo­ple if we are to en­sure that the chil­dren of our Na­tion find an equal place, hap­pi­ly in Trinidad & To­ba­go. May God Bless Our Na­tion.

Steve Al­varez

Via e-mail