Kamla: We can still determine our future

Opposition Leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, says Republic Day serves as a “keen reminder” that this country still has remarkable powers to determine the nation’s future as a people.

In her Republic Day message, she urged citizens to use their voting power to ensure they protect the hard-won freedoms and demand an end to government abuse, intrusion, and overreach.

She took aim at the present administration whom she criticised for eroding the country’s democratic institutions and tenets, overseeing an economic down spiral, a deadly crime and violence wave, and “a citizenry forced to exist in fear and terror at all levels.”

She added, “During the past nine years of the current administration, there has been an unending attack on independent institutions. Numerous attempts to subvert the Constitution and unprecedented government intrusion into the lives of average citizens have also occurred.”

In pointing to the Government’s financial legislation, health mandates, “excessive spying and surveillance to interferences in the protective services,” Persad-Bissessar said the Government has taken the nation down a path of dictatorship.

She said in deference to and commitment to the truest tenets of constitutional republicanism, she has always philosophised about improving government transparency, restricting government overreach, and protecting the rights, privileges, and freedoms of citizens.

The Opposition Leader hailed T&T’s republican status as “a very progressive move” in the country’s self-determination, as constitutional republicanism gives the nation the right to create its own governance rules, elect its own Head of State, and chart its destiny as a sovereign nation while protecting the rights and freedoms of the elected minority from abuse by the elected majority.

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