The Gen­er­al Elec­tion is over. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the 41 peo­ple who have been elect­ed to serve in T&T’s Par­lia­ment. I pray that each one of you will strive to rep­re­sent your re­spec­tive con­stituen­cy hon­est­ly and col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers to build a just, in­clu­sive, vi­brant na­tion. 

Each elect­ed Rep­re­sen­ta­tive will bring to the ta­ble his/her be­liefs and val­ues. Every­one has the right to free­dom of thought, con­science and re­li­gion. Sec­tion 4 (h) of T&T’s Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for free­dom of con­science and re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice, in­clud­ing wor­ship. It pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion based on re­li­gion. In­di­vid­u­als have a right to hold both re­li­gious and non-re­li­gious be­liefs.

Years ago, I read Miroslav Volf’s book en­ti­tled, A Pub­lic Faith: How Fol­low­ers of Christ Should Serve the Com­mon Good. In­ter alia, he said:  “To live with in­tegri­ty, it is im­por­tant to know what’s right and what’s wrong, to be ed­u­cat­ed moral­ly. How­ev­er, mere­ly KNOW­ING is not enough. Vir­tu­ous char­ac­ter mat­ters more than moral knowl­edge. The rea­son is sim­ple: like the self-con­fess­ing apos­tle Paul in Ro­mans 7, most of those who do wrong know what’s right but find them­selves ir­re­sistibly at­tract­ed to its op­po­site. Faith idles when char­ac­ter shriv­els.” 

I am in Lon­don at the mo­ment. Re­cent­ly, MP Stephen Pounds, for­mer Labour MP for Eal­ing, and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Catholic Union, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Pub Talk re­flect­ing on the im­por­tance of faith in one’s pub­lic life. In­ter alia, he said: “Peo­ple may change but faith does not. We must not com­mod­i­fy life, rather we need to fol­low Catholic So­cial Teach­ing and, when we leap, we must en­sure that our faith is not left be­hind.”

We live in a mul­ti-faith so­ci­ety and one in which there are peo­ple who, al­though they have no re­li­gious be­liefs, have a wide va­ri­ety of be­liefs, val­ues and ways of look­ing at the world. Re­mem­ber this when tak­ing the Oath of Of­fice to sit in Par­lia­ment, the Leg­isla­tive Branch of T&T. Be­sides the Pres­i­dent of TT, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is com­posed of the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, 41 elect­ed MPs and 31 Sen­a­tors. You must all find a way of work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to build the com­mon good; a na­tion in which jus­tice, peace, and love can pre­vail. 

In our bi­cam­er­al Par­lia­ment, the 31 Sen­ate mem­bers who will be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent will com­prise: 16 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors ap­point­ed on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, 6 Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors ap­point­ed on the ad­vice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and 9 In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent to rep­re­sent oth­er sec­tors of civ­il so­ci­ety.

Each of you will bring your faith/be­liefs/val­ues to the work in hand. Re­mem­ber the words of Ter­tul­lian, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian the­olo­gian, polemi­cist, and moral­ist, who said: “You can judge the qual­i­ty of their faith from the way they be­have. Dis­ci­pline is an in­dex to doc­trine.” You have been elect­ed/ap­point­ed to SERVE. Rachel Wells’ 2024 ar­ti­cle in Forbes out­lines 5 key val­ues, be­hav­iours, and qual­i­ties that char­ac­ter­ize ser­vant lead­ers - em­pa­thy, hu­mil­i­ty, self­less­ness, vi­sion and em­pow­er­ment. These qual­i­ties are need­ed if you are to use the na­tion’s lim­it­ed re­sources re­spon­si­bly/eq­ui­tably.

Pope Fran­cis, whose words con­stant­ly re­mind me of the link be­tween my faith and the way in which I live my life said: “If a thought or a de­sire leads you on the road of hu­mil­i­ty, of self-abase­ment and of ser­vice to oth­ers, it is of Je­sus; but if it leads you on the road of self-im­por­tance, of van­i­ty and of pride, or on the road of ab­stract thought, it is not of Je­sus.” 

Here in the UK, 650 mem­bers of Par­lia­ment were elect­ed to the House of Com­mons – one for each par­lia­men­tary con­stituen­cy, in the 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion. Hu­man­ists UK have ob­served, in 2024 the UK elect­ed “the most open­ly non-re­li­gious House of Com­mons in his­to­ry, with rough­ly 40% of MPs dur­ing their swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny choos­ing to take the sec­u­lar af­fir­ma­tion in­stead of a re­li­gious oath to God, up from 24% af­ter the 2019 elec­tion...about a dozen are thought to choose it be­cause their re­li­gious be­liefs pro­hib­it oaths.”

But re­mem­ber, an in­clu­sive na­tion in­cludes those who are non-re­li­gious. Na­tion-build­ing re­quires all hands on deck. The chal­lenge will al­ways be to find com­mon ground/val­ues. 

As you, our own elect­ed/ap­point­ed cit­i­zens take up your po­si­tions in T&T’s Par­lia­ment, re­mem­ber that while we will be will­ing to work with you to pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment dur­ing these chal­leng­ing times, we look to you to demon­strate good gov­er­nance which is par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, con­sen­sus ori­ent­ed, ac­count­able, trans­par­ent, re­spon­sive, ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient, eq­ui­table and in­clu­sive and which fol­lows the rule of law.