President Anthony Carmona yesterday reminded the country’s political parties of their commitment, under the recently signed Code of Ethical Political Conduct to stop “candidates and their supporters from engaging in character assassination, spreading of false rumours and gossip, and ensuring that persons are true to their words.” In his Republic Day address to the nation yesterday evening, President Carmona said the Cude, which was developed by a committee of civil society representatives chaired by Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Harris, “is an outward display of our burgeoning political maturity.” “It may do the Members of Parliament well to recall this hallowed objective in the cut and thrust of their Parliamentary discourse,” he said.
The President said T&T is now fully aware that violence in one part of the globe touches us all. “In the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Panam Flight 103, Anthony Selwyn Swan of Point Fortin, on his way back to university, perished. In the Westgate incident in Kenya just over a year ago, Ravi Ramrattan, a Presidential Medal winner from Cunupia, and a growing light of hope, also perished.
“But for timely circumstance, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago would have been on the doomed Malaysian Airlines flight shot down over Ukraine. We must therefore not lull ourselves into a false sense of security thinking that it cannot happen here. Lest we forget, it can and it has,” he said.
President Carmona said he wantes to provide access to the corridors of power to all citizens. “There is a misconception that you have to know somebody to be heard or to get anything. This has to stop,” he said. “There are those who think they are entitled because of influence, affluence or political affiliation, their last name, job, family connections, acquaintances and friends. This misguided way of doing things has excluded vast sections of our citizens from opportunities to become involved in governance.” The President also said: “Lines of succession and leadership must be created. Young people want to make a difference but they are generally not afforded the opportunity. It is for this reason that the Office of The President holds the firm view that the era of the super-technocrat is over and this is reflected in the appointments by The President in keeping with his Constitutional powers. “As a result, no one person will be on more than one President-appointed Commission or Board unless exceptional circumstances exist (and none has been found so far) or by virtue of ex oficio appointment. This equally applies to senatorial appointments. The philosophy of indispensability, rampant in governmental and state structures, has no place in progressive governance.”
President Carmona expressed concern about a sense of entitlement born out of dependency that is threatening the society. He said this dependency is not unique to any one sector of society but “is the jockey riding the economy in all sectors.” He added: “When the only pie that exists to be shared is from the government, then it is no wonder that the ‘crab in the barrel’ syndrome takes over. The world is full of pies but to access them we have to be innovative and competitive, characteristics which seem to be elusive in this nation of ours.” The President also said: “We have a democratic system of governance which is rooted in the belief of government by the people, of the people, for the people. There is a quiet power which exists and which is held in the hands of the people. As a people we are masters of our destiny.”
