Kevon Felmine

Act­ing Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith says T&T is at a cross­roads and needs to re­store fam­i­ly val­ues that ex­ist­ed dur­ing the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od. He said that cit­i­zens must recog­nise the on­slaught on the de­vel­op­ing na­tion and in­spire com­mu­ni­ties to live bet­ter. Hamel-Smith made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he brought greet­ings at the 2011 Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic Day awards func­tion at the Ser­vol au­di­to­ri­um, La Ro­maine. The func­tion was held by Cit­i­zens for a Bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT) in ho­n­our of lo­cal sport­ing icon Alvin Corneal. Hamel-Smith said: "Make no mis­takes about it, ladies and gen­tle­men, we are at a cross­roads here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Now is the time to for­get all our doubts, now is the time to be­lieve in our­selves.

"We must find the truth that lies in the very heart of what we are. We can­not be daunt­ed by the prospect of se­ri­ous chal­lenges. "Fam­i­ly life is marked­ly dif­fer­ent now from the gen­er­a­tion from when we be­gan our in­de­pen­dence. "We, in a sense, have come away from our moor­ings but there is no rea­son why we should not be able to re­store home­life as you knew it. "At­ten­tion must be paid to the re­build­ing of fam­i­lies, so the young peo­ple can have a shel­ter from harsh re­al­i­ties that they face," he said. He said those with­out fam­i­ly must not be ex­clud­ed and that so­ci­ety must find a way to bring them at a place of un­der­stand­ing and self­worth.

Through ac­cep­tance and love for them­selves, he said, they would see them­selves as hav­ing a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to the build­ing of the coun­try. He al­so said that Laven­tille peo­ple could up­lift them­selves as icons such as late steel­band arranger Clive Bradley, ca­lyp­son­ian David Rud­der and late foot­baller Rus­sel Tesheira, who all came from that the com­mu­ni­ty. Hamel-Smith praised the CBTT, say­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion was a sig­nal to what T&T can be. The act­ing pres­i­dent de­scribed Corneal as a re­nais­sance man in the sport­ing cir­cle and an in­spi­ra­tion to oth­ers. Hamel-Smith pre­sent­ed Corneal with a plaque to ho­n­our his achieve­ment and con­tri­bu­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go as a foot­baller, crick­eter, coach and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty.