It is, there­fore, the sa­cred du­ty of us as lead­ers to mir­ror the be­hav­iours which we want to see repli­cat­ed in our so­ci­ety. Jus­tice re­quires in par­tic­u­lar that spe­cial arrange­ments are made for the dis­ad­van­taged and the op­pressed in our land. Not arrange­ments in which we en­snare them in­to a life­time of servi­tude, with­out hope of mov­ing up the lad­der of suc­cess but rather, through train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion, each per­son must have a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing by his own hard work and per­son­al ef­fort.

But the trans­for­ma­tion of T&T can­not be ac­com­plished by our lead­ers alone. It re­quires each of us, as in­di­vid­u­als, to ex­er­cise the virtue of dis­ci­pline. Let us now turn to those of us who pro­claim to be the av­er­age law-abid­ing cit­i­zen. We each need to ask our­selves: "Am I guilty of law­less and undis­ci­plined be­hav­iour? Do I dri­ve while un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol? Do I break red lights?.... Do I use my cell­phone while dri­ving? Why do I choose to fo­cus on our dri­ving be­hav­iours? Our road­ways are the most vis­i­ble pub­lic spaces in which in­dis­ci­pline and law­less­ness pre­vail and the re­sult­ing chaos is the ide­al en­vi­ron­ment for crime of every va­ri­ety to flour­ish.

And be­cause we are all guilty of cre­at­ing this en­vi­ron­ment of in­dis­ci­pline and law­less­ness, we have the pow­er to change the game, while sav­ing lives and stamp­ing out the car­nage on our roads. To achieve this ob­jec­tive each and every one of us will have to ex­er­cise dis­ci­pline on our roads. But no mat­ter the lev­el of dis­ci­pline which we at­tain, there will al­ways be need for en­force­ment of our laws if we are to achieve peace in our so­ci­ety. Al­though I do not con­done for one mo­ment any mis­use of pow­er, I draw great com­fort from the sense of en­thu­si­asm which the Po­lice Ser­vice has dis­played in car­ry­ing out their du­ties dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

I urge them to con­tin­ue to act ef­fec­tive­ly and de­ci­sive­ly but al­ways with­in law­ful lim­its. Let us not put at risk the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits which the state of emer­gency can help to de­liv­er. Our peo­ple are famed for their hos­pi­tal­i­ty....we can es­tab­lish a world-rank­ing tourism and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, pro­vid­ing jobs and op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ty. If we could on­ly repli­cate the type of hard work and in­dus­try dis­played by our out­stand­ing per­for­mances in every sphere of na­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty, Trinidad and To­ba­go would find it­self at the top of the class. Fel­low cit­i­zens, we have to wake up to the truth that the turn­around of our coun­try is sole­ly up to us, the 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple who in­hab­it these is­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

And fi­nal­ly, let us con­sid­er our en­vi­ron­ment. How we main­tain our sur­round­ings tells us so much about our­selves and who we are as a na­tion. The garbage we strew across our pub­lic spaces sug­gests that we have no sense of be­long­ing to this place we call Trinidad and To­ba­go. More­over, tak­ing care of our en­vi­ron­ment im­plies not on­ly an ab­sence of garbage and degra­da­tion of our en­vi­ron­ment but the tak­ing of pos­i­tive steps to­wards en­hanc­ing those ar­eas of our en­vi­ron­ment which we use. We the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go must each take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our ac­tions where garbage dis­pos­al is con­cerned and I urge each of you to go fur­ther and to start to beau­ti­fy your sur­round­ings.

Un­der­stand well, fel­low cit­i­zens, this op­por­tu­ni­ty which now presents it­self to trans­form Trinidad and To­ba­go is very un­like­ly to re­peat it­self. It is ab­solute­ly im­per­a­tive that we seize the mo­ment. We have no time to lose. Each of us must take such steps as we can to make a dif­fer­ence: At this dark hour, each of our small lights of bril­liance when added to­geth­er will il­lu­mi­nate our coun­try and achieve for our na­tion our po­ten­tial for great­ness. May Almighty God rich­ly bless each one of you and may God bless our na­tion.