The Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day ex­pressed sin­cer­est thanks to the thou­sands of cit­i­zens who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Wednes­day’s In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, not­ing they were the largest crowds ever seen at these cel­e­bra­tions.

There had been huge crowds at var­i­ous events mark­ing T&T’s Di­a­mond Ju­bilee 60th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary. Cel­e­bra­tions re­turned to nor­mal at pub­lic events af­ter a two-year hia­tus due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

A state­ment from the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­istry of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed, “All re­ports con­firmed that this year’s ac­tiv­i­ties at­tract­ed the largest crowds ever seen at these cel­e­bra­tions, sig­nalling, as it did, the re­turn of the peo­ple’s cel­e­bra­tion to the streets.

“The joy seen on the faces of young and old over the last month, the sheer ex­u­ber­ance on the faces of those who fol­lowed the mil­i­tary pa­rades in Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough, and the un­abashed dis­plays of pa­tri­o­tism through the cre­ative use of the na­tion­al colours, red, white, and black, all point to one in­escapable fact: as our Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter al­ways states, ‘we have bound­less faith in our des­tiny’.

“As proud as we are of our sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments over the past 60 years, we are proud­er still of the love we share as a coun­try. At our Di­a­mond Ju­bilee, this love of our na­tion was tan­gi­bly demon­strat­ed by the large crowds that came out to cel­e­brate as one peo­ple.”

Gov­ern­ment thanked all who con­tributed to en­sur­ing the suc­cess of these cel­e­bra­tions.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who chaired the Gov­ern­ment’s plan­ning com­mit­tee, added, “The cel­e­bra­to­ry ac­tiv­i­ties were all suc­cess­ful be­cause each per­son in their own small way demon­strat­ed the true essence of be­ing Trin­bag­on­ian, that is, see­ing light where oth­ers see dark­ness, util­is­ing our God-giv­en cre­ativ­i­ty to make oth­ers hap­py, and en­sur­ing that no one was left be­hind.”

Gov­ern­ment al­so thanked Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, “who added a re­gion­al flavour to the cel­e­bra­tions” and praised the Cul­tur­al Car­a­van which tra­versed T&T, en­sur­ing every cit­i­zen had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate.

The dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties will con­clude with the cel­e­bra­tion of the 46th an­niver­sary of the coun­try’s at­tain­ment of Re­pub­li­can sta­tus on Sep­tem­ber 24.

The Pa­tri­AR­Tism ex­hi­bi­tion of paint­ings at Mille Fleurs, White­hall and Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle runs un­til Sep­tem­ber 30. The Di­a­mond Ju­bilee art ex­hi­bi­tion at Par­lia­ment’s Ro­tun­da and the Na­tion­al Li­brary’s ex­hi­bi­tion con­tin­ues to be open to the pub­lic and the food and cul­tur­al vil­lage, util­is­ing White­hall as the back­drop, will con­tin­ue un­til Sep­tem­ber 4.