Today, Trinidad and Tobago celebrates sixty-four years of Independence and, in this significant year, fifty years as a Republic.
Independence gave us the authority to determine our own course. Republican status placed responsibility for our constitutional life fully into our own hands. Sovereignty has therefore become stewardship: the duty to care wisely for the nation entrusted to us and to pass it on stronger than we received it.
We should be candid with ourselves. All is not as we would wish it to be. Too many families have known the grief caused by violence. Too many citizens face uncertainty about their future, and too many young people struggle to see a secure place for themselves in the country of their birth.
Independence does not require us to overlook these realities. It gives us the freedom, and imposes upon us the duty, to confront them.
The freedom we celebrate includes the freedom to live without fear. Every life lost to violence diminishes us, and every family left to mourn bears a sorrow that touches the nation as a whole. We are therefore right to insist upon safety and order.
But our Independence also entrusts to us laws, institutions and liberties which generations before us struggled to secure. A mature society does not regard security, liberty and the sanctity of life as competing aspirations. It works, patiently and responsibly, to protect all three.
That responsibility belongs to all of us. The deeper work of building a peaceful society begins wherever a child is taught the value of human life; wherever a family, teacher, coach, faith community or neighbour helps a young person to discover purpose; and wherever citizens choose responsibility over indifference and service over self-interest.
It also requires us to recognise one another as equal citizens.
Independence made us one people in law. Nationhood asks us to become one people in practice: not by surrendering the differences that enrich us, but by refusing to allow those differences to determine who belongs, whose contribution is valued, or whose dignity deserves protection.
The Republic belongs wholly and equally to every citizen. Its institutions are not the possessions of the persons who occupy them, nor instruments of the moment. They are held in trust for all the people. Their strength depends upon the integrity of those who serve within them, the vigilance of those whom they serve, and our willingness to remember that, after political disagreements have passed, we must still live together and build one future.
That future will be shaped by what we place in the hands of the next generation.
We must leave our young people institutions worthy of their confidence and an economy capable of rewarding enterprise, creativity and honest work. We must strengthen our ability to produce and innovate, and ensure that the opportunities of nationhood are not confined by birth or circumstance.
We must also pass on the full richness of our cultural inheritance: the faiths, traditions, festivals, music and stories through which generations of our people have fashioned unity out of difference. To cherish that inheritance is not merely to celebrate its symbols, but to respect and encourage the young hands in which it will live tomorrow.
The land and seas entrusted to us are also part of our Independence. Protecting them, preparing wisely for a changing climate and strengthening our capacity to feed ourselves are acts of stewardship required of us today.
Nor does sovereignty require us to stand apart from the world. Our Independence is strengthened when we bring to the Caribbean family, and to the wider community of nations, a spirit of mutual respect and a steadfast commitment to cooperation, security and peace.
The return of the Independence Day parade gives us an opportunity not only to celebrate our nationhood, but to affirm once more our responsibility for its future.
The true measure of our Independence is not simply that we are free to choose for ourselves. It is whether we choose wisely, whether we treat one another justly, and whether we leave those who come after us a country more peaceful, more productive and more united than the one entrusted to us.
Sixty-four years ago, we assumed responsibility for our own destiny. Fifty years ago, we affirmed that responsibility as a Republic. Today, that responsibility belongs to every one of us.
Let us meet it with honesty about where we have fallen short, confidence in what we can yet achieve, and faith in one another.
I wish every citizen of Trinidad and Tobago a safe, happy and blessed Independence Day.
