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Friday, July 18, 2025

President’s words of wisdom

by

1039 days ago
20220912

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes spared no punch­es as she zoned in on the be­hav­iour of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans dur­ing yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ni­al start to the third ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment.

Tak­ing the words of Robert Louis Steven­son in his ref­er­ence to the British Par­lia­ment, she not­ed, “We all know what Par­lia­ment is and we are all ashamed of it.”

The Pres­i­dent re­mind­ed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of the oath they took to serve “with­out fear or favour,” cau­tion­ing that they are the “van­guards” of democ­ra­cy and peo­ple ex­pect them to put aside self­ish agen­das. She not­ed, how­ev­er, that none of this can be achieved “if the start­ing point is ug­ly pol­i­tics.”

On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, this news­pa­per has used this space to ex­press con­cern about the pet­ty name call­ing, name sham­ing, walk­outs, lack of re­spect that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans dis­play and lack of de­bat­ing in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, where each side, PNM and UNC, tend to be­have as though they are on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms.

We share the Pres­i­dent’s view that Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pects and de­serves a lot bet­ter. In­deed, now is the time for good cit­i­zens to come to­geth­er and stand up in the in­ter­est of the coun­try. Nar­row po­lit­i­cal views are mean­ing­less and on­ly serve to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to treat each oth­er with the very same hate and dis­re­spect dis­played by our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

We hope the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans not on­ly heard the Pres­i­dent but tru­ly lis­tened, di­gest­ed and recom­mit­ted them­selves to do bet­ter in the in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens dur­ing the new ses­sion.

We note that Her Ex­cel­len­cy, not for the first time, had to cau­tion in­di­vid­u­als who should be role mod­els but in­stead have set the worst ex­am­ples for the peo­ple who elect­ed them, and even worse, chil­dren per­haps as­pir­ing to hold such of­fices in fu­ture.

Let us hope that the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans now ful­ly un­der­stand the awe­some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they have to play in na­tion-build­ing and if they don’t, that the pop­u­la­tion will stand up and let them know that no mat­ter which side of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide they stand on, when they gath­er in the Par­lia­ment, all 41 of them form the gov­ern­ment and must work in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

As Her Ex­cel­len­cy re­mind­ed, while they play pol­i­tics, it is the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing fall­out from an econ­o­my still yet to re­cov­er from two years of COVID-19 lock­down, a spi­ralling crime rate, ram­pant child abuse and many oth­er ills, in­clud­ing a road net­work that has been al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate.

Yet, in a re­sponse soon af­ter the Pres­i­dent’s speech, both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, by their re­fusal to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for how the dig­ni­ty of the House and their roles as lead­ers have been erod­ed, failed to give us any hope of a bet­ter out­come.

Yet for all their ap­par­ent brava­do, yes­ter­day was a defin­ing mo­ment for T&T and we hope those to whom the mes­sage was de­liv­ered tru­ly re­ceived it and un­der­stood what is re­quired. As such, the pop­u­la­tion waits for when the re­al de­bates be­gin to see whether the Par­lia­ment will re­turn to a house of dis­re­spect and mau­vais langue, or there will be a new dawn to give cit­i­zens a sense of hope.


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