Orin Gor­don

Ear­ly on In­de­pen­dence Day, just af­ter mid­night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar post­ed a mes­sage to “the UNC fam­i­ly”, thank­ing them for “the ho­n­our of lead­ing our great par­ty and coun­try.”

The PM’s col­leagues de­fend­ed her from the crit­i­cism that fol­lowed, say­ing she’d al­ready de­liv­ered a mes­sage to the na­tion. Let’s ex­am­ine that.

Last Sun­day, the eve of in­de­pen­dence, she said in a state­ment that Trinidad and To­ba­go must stop blam­ing its post-In­de­pen­dence fail­ures on its colo­nial past.

T&T has failed to build on a good hand­off by the British in 1962, she said, and at the time of in­de­pen­dence, it had a high­er per-capi­ta in­come than Japan, Sin­ga­pore, Spain, Por­tu­gal, Mex­i­co, Brazil and Chi­na.

On In­de­pen­dence Day came the mes­sage to her par­ty. Lat­er in the day, she spoke at a colour­ful cer­e­mo­ny. The Cab­i­net was present, in sar­to­r­i­al splen­dour that chan­nelled Roy­al As­cot on a late Spring race day. So were Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, dig­ni­taries and be­medaled mem­bers of the armed forces. Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, the PM thanked the forces for ef­fect­ing a re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crime, with the mur­der rate, she said, at a 15-year low.

There’s a lot to un­pack here. On T&T’s eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry over the past 64 years, one glar­ing er­ror of de­vel­op­men­tal plan­ning was scrap­ping rail trans­port, rather than mod­ernising it. Al­most every­thing has been shunt­ed on­to our in­creas­ing­ly over­bur­dened roads. Guyana made the same mis­take, ex­cept that it has far more room and mon­ey to ex­pand its road net­work.

Oth­er big fac­tors changed the eco­nom­ic out­look of T&T and oth­er coun­tries. At the in­sis­tence of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion and in the name of fair trade, African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic (ACP) sug­ar-pro­duc­ing coun­tries had pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to a num­ber of Eu­ro­pean mar­kets re­moved. That dev­as­tat­ed sug­ar in­dus­tries in places such as St Kitts, Mau­ri­tius, Fi­ji, T&T, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana.

I’ll leave it to econ­o­mists to delve deep­er in­to these eco­nom­ic mat­ters. And I’ll be brief in ex­am­in­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mes­sage to the UNC mem­ber­ship. It was very nar­row­ly drawn in de­mo­graph­ic terms, and it was clear that she was ex­clud­ing the per­suad­able mid­dle that co­a­lesced with the UNC base to de­liv­er a shel­lack­ing of the then PNM gov­ern­ment in April 2025.

The im­pres­sive strides of the peo­ple who form the UNC base de­serve to be laud­ed. I feel that. I’ve twice been com­mis­sioned as a speech­writer for In­di­an Ar­rival Day by the Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

How­ev­er, In­de­pen­dence Day was a day to cel­e­brate the whole, which, in the words of T&T’s beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten na­tion­al an­them, is every creed and race. The Prime Min­is­ter chose in­stead to lean in­to sec­tar­i­an­ism.

Her first in­de­pen­dence-re­lat­ed state­ment was a scold­ing, her sec­ond was to her base, and her third was back-slap­ping. Be­yond a short mes­sage con­tained in a poster filled with punc­tu­a­tion er­rors on in­de­pen­dence eve, she didn’t have a mes­sage of uni­ty, hope and up­lift­ment to of­fer the coun­try. Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans need­ed to hear that from their leader. Do­mes­tic and busi­ness bud­gets are tight, busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty is down and con­fi­dence is low.

The UNC ran a bril­liant elec­tion cam­paign last year. It chan­nelled the rich and var­ied fab­ric of the coun­try it want­ed to lead. And yet, the PM’s rhetoric has of­ten been di­vi­sive. Be­yond the light­house. The One Per cent. The la­goons. Us and them.

In re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism from for­mer PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley, she said what ter­ri­ble places PNM strong­holds Beetham, Laven­tille and Sea Lots were. Imag­ine hear­ing that from your coun­try’s leader. A PM is PM of every­one, in­clud­ing those who’d nev­er vote for their par­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar tight­ly clutched the hand of Sea Lots’ fa­mous son Yung Bred­da when it was pho­to-op ad­van­ta­geous to do so. She should re­sist the urge to put down his com­mu­ni­ty.

On In­de­pen­dence Day, Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers’ band of broth­ers was fight­ing for their com­pet­i­tive lives against their fiercest ri­vals, Guyana Ama­zon War­riors.

TKR is an In­di­an-owned fran­chise, but their pas­sion­ate fans em­brace them as a T&T na­tion­al team … with ex­tras. Pooran, Bra­vo, Nar­ine, Pol­lard and Da Sil­va rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant sec­tion of The Peo­ple Who Came, to bor­row the ti­tle of the icon­ic his­to­ry text­book (Braith­waite and Phillips, 1972). On Au­gust 31, they bet­ter rep­re­sent­ed what the day stood for.