Much ink has al­ready been spilt in re­cent weeks and days over En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s un­for­tu­nate and un­for­get­table ‘hot mic in­ci­dent’ in Par­lia­ment, in which he was caught mak­ing deroga­to­ry re­marks about Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In­deed, many right-think­ing in­di­vid­u­als have open­ly scoffed at the re­marks on the grounds that much bet­ter be­hav­iour is ex­pect­ed from a per­son of his cal­i­bre.

The state­ments have al­so gar­nered a re­li­gious back­lash in the midst of Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions, as it was felt that at a time when the god­dess Moth­er Lak­sh­mi was at the fore­front, Young’s stance against a woman of faith rep­re­sent­ed a cer­tain amount of dark­ness.

How­ev­er, out of dark­ness must al­ways come light.

This is why the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) must be com­mend­ed for its de­ci­sion to have Young speak at the clos­ing Na­gar event, not as an ex­on­er­a­tion of his ac­tions, but to rep­re­sent it­self as an or­gan­i­sa­tion ca­pa­ble of some­thing big­ger, bet­ter and brighter.

Equal­ly de­serv­ing of com­men­da­tion is Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who re­turned to the is­land on Mon­day night, for his de­ci­sion to ad­dress the Di­vali Na­gar tonight.

For us, this is a step in the right di­rec­tion by Dr Row­ley, who has pre­vi­ous­ly shied away from these cel­e­bra­tions while sug­gest­ing that they rep­re­sent­ed a sort of dark­ness to him, as strong, op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal voic­es of­ten de­cried and ob­ject­ed to his pres­ence there.

Un­de­ni­ably, the Na­gar has long been wrong­ly used as an open plat­form to pro­mote Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) pol­i­tics, cre­at­ing a rather un­com­fort­able plat­form for a non-Hin­du, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader to par­tic­i­pate in.

But stay­ing away from the Na­gar did lit­tle to elim­i­nate the dark­ness that ex­ists in our pol­i­tics, fu­elled by our eth­nic dif­fer­ences.

T&T’s im­age as a har­mo­nious mul­ti-racial, mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety has fad­ed as our po­lit­i­cal ban­ter and gen­er­al dis­course have be­come more and more hate­ful.

The NCIC’s de­ci­sion to once again in­vite the Prime Min­is­ter to these events, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal or eth­nic con­sid­er­a­tions, and the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept this in­vi­ta­tion, tells us that the fire hasn’t en­tire­ly burnt out as yet.

As we cel­e­brate this spe­cial re­li­gious ob­ser­vance, we are all acute­ly aware of the hor­ren­dous crime sit­u­a­tion that re­quires not on­ly di­vine in­ter­ven­tion but the col­lec­tive light of us all, to over­pow­er the dark­ness with­in our homes, our com­mu­ni­ties, our schools and our busi­ness­es that threat­ens to sub­sume us all.

In­deed, as a so­ci­ety, we must be able to shed light in cir­cum­stances where our women and chil­dren are suf­fer­ing from do­mes­tic and sex­u­al abuse and in the in­ter­est of re­duc­ing pover­ty and home­less­ness.

The light of good­ness must cer­tain­ly be kept burn­ing to elim­i­nate re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance.

Di­vali gives us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to change our ap­proach from one that il­lu­mi­nates the dark­ness of oth­ers sim­ply to ex­pose and cast blame up­on them.

We know the dark side of our coun­try but we all as in­di­vid­u­als have a role to play in car­ry­ing our light dai­ly if we tru­ly wish for dark­ness that cur­rent­ly abounds to dis­si­pate.