Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has called for greater re­spect, re­straint and uni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, warn­ing against a cul­ture where “pub­lic speech of­ten moves faster than re­flec­tion.”

In her In­di­an Ar­rival Day mes­sage, Kan­ga­loo said the ob­ser­vance serves as a re­minder that while cit­i­zens have the free­dom to dis­agree, they al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to do so with re­spect and mea­sure.

She said a Re­pub­lic is pro­tect­ed not on­ly by laws, but by how cit­i­zens treat one an­oth­er and the in­sti­tu­tions en­trust­ed to serve the coun­try.

The Pres­i­dent urged cit­i­zens to choose “du­ty over in­dif­fer­ence, uni­ty over di­vi­sion, and ser­vice over self-dis­play” as the coun­try marks 181 years since the ar­rival of In­di­an in­den­tured im­mi­grants to Trinidad.

Kan­ga­loo re­flect­ed on the hard­ships faced by the im­mi­grants, de­scrib­ing their jour­ney as one marked by “loss, courage and hope.”

She said de­spite be­ing sub­ject­ed to harsh con­di­tions up­on ar­rival, they built homes, com­mu­ni­ties, schools, busi­ness­es, places of wor­ship and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions that re­main cen­tral to the fab­ric of T&T.

Kan­ga­loo said In­di­an Ar­rival Day stands not on­ly as a his­tor­i­cal mile­stone, but al­so as a les­son in hu­man dig­ni­ty, fel­low­ship and na­tion­al uni­ty.

She point­ed to the ja­ha­ji bond as an ex­am­ple of peo­ple over­com­ing dif­fer­ences of lan­guage, re­gion and cir­cum­stance through shared strug­gle and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The Pres­i­dent al­so said T&T’s strength lies in its abil­i­ty to em­brace dif­fer­ent faiths, tra­di­tions and cul­tures with­out hos­til­i­ty, adding that the com­mon good must rise above nar­row in­ter­ests.