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.”

With an ele­phant head, body of a man, the Hin­du God Ganesh, at first ap­pears un­gain­ly, but among Hin­du Gods his pop­u­lar­i­ty abounds. Mur­tis of Gane­sha can be found in tem­ples, homes, mo­tor ve­hi­cles, and on of­fice desks.

Along with the paint­ing of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings and lo­cal­ly made choco­lates, which For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers took to Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Peo­ple’s Pow­er for For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade Félix Plasen­cia at Thurs­day’s work­ing vis­it, Sobers al­so tot­ed a heavy bag of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

The Sep­tem­ber 17 ex­pi­ra­tion of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) is fast ap­proach­ing, and the Gov­ern­ment must soon de­cide whether Trinidad and To­ba­go should con­tin­ue un­der ex­tra­or­di­nary emer­gency pow­ers or re­turn to nor­mal polic­ing mea­sures.

Yes­ter­day’s vis­it to Cara­cas by a del­e­ga­tion led by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, sig­nals the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a much-an­tic­i­pat­ed im­prove­ment in re­la­tions be­tween this coun­try and its clos­est neigh­bour.

Fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives and fam­i­ly sup­port pro­grammes are among the most com­mon mea­sures adopt­ed by coun­tries fac­ing pop­u­la­tion stag­na­tion or de­cline. In that con­text, the ini­tia­tive by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to ad­dress the is­land’s falling birth rate is a com­mend­able one. How­ev­er, re­vers­ing de­mo­graph­ic de­cline will re­quire far more than good in­ten­tions or short-term as­sis­tance for fam­i­lies.

In­de­pen­dence Day is one of those rare oc­ca­sions when pol­i­tics usu­al­ly gives way to pa­tri­o­tism.

In her In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar posed a chal­leng­ing ques­tion: af­ter more than six decades of self-gov­ern­ment, how much longer can Trinidad and To­ba­go blame its short­com­ings on its colo­nial past?

On Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 4, more than 1.2 bil­lion Hin­dus world­wide will cel­e­brate the fes­ti­val “Kr­ish­na Janam Asht­mi,” al­so known as Asht­mi Rohni, Shree Jayan­ti Kr­ish­nash­ta­mi and Goku­lash­ta­mi, with great zeal and fer­vour.

Six­ty-four years af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tained po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence from Britain through the lead­er­ship of Pre­mier Dr Er­ic Williams and the sup­port of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Rudranath Capildeo, it is fit­ting that we re­flect on our na­tion­al jour­ney and as­sess how far we have come.

In­de­pen­dence means more than free­dom from ex­ter­nal con­trol. It places up­on a na­tion the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ing it­self, man­ag­ing its re­sources, pro­tect­ing its cit­i­zens and ad­dress­ing the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, le­gal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges it faces. Gov­ern­ments are elect­ed to con­front these prob­lems re­gard­less of how they orig­i­nat­ed. They ex­er­cise au­thor­i­ty over na­tion­al bor­ders and in­sti­tu­tions and are ac­count­able for what oc­curs with­in them un­der the rule of law.

We are a young na­tion in syn­co­pa­tion, shift­ing from strong beats of progress to off­beats of po­lit­i­cal and racist mis­chief, then mov­ing again with mo­men­tum, chip­ping to pan, shak­ing waist to tas­sa, in this land of en­ter­prise, mau­vais langue and shid­iots talk­ing racist and po­lit­i­cal non­sense to ma­nip­u­late and di­vide. But when the tribes meet in pa­n­yards, bod­ies move in tan­dem to scin­til­lat­ing mu­sic; no­body cares about the race of the per­son next to them. And on J’Ou­vert morn, peo­ple of all eth­nic­i­ties, un­fet­tered, faces mud-cov­ered, play them­selves, roll and wine, mock­ing mind­ben­ders, and po­lit­i­cal pre­tenders who mess with their heads. That’s re­al cul­tur­al in­de­pen­dence.