PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 31, CMC – Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Monday had a message for members and supporters of the ruling United National Congress (UNC) as the Trinidad and Tobago celebrates 64 years of independence : “do not crawl on your belly for anyone. It’s either peace or total war, nothing in between”.
In her message, Persad-Bssessar, an attorney, who is serving her second term as head of a government here, said that she was sending a message specifically to the “UNC family.
“I say thank you for the honour of leading our great party and country. I love each one of you, and I will love you all till the day I leave this life. Today we acknowledge our mothers and fathers, grandparents and great-grandparents, and the suffering they endured in the lagoons, cane fields, and oilfields to give us a fighting chance pre- and post-independence.”
Persad-Bissessar said that the party’s membership “was born of people mired in poverty who, at times, survived on salt and rice, while drinking water from ponds and springs. Sometimes eating one meal a day to make the sacrifices needed to educate us in cowsheds and church annexes.
“They fetched water in box carts and bull carts, used flambeaus for light, had no healthcare, possessed one outfit of clothes for going out, and usually had to walk or ride a bicycle for miles in the sun or rain to reach any government service. They were objects of ridicule and hatred in this country for years under the PNM, post-1962 Independence.”
But she said that yet over 64 years, “they fought to educate their children to ensure that we owned our rightful place as equal citizens in this country.
“We must keep working for our sons and daughters to qualify themselves to have better lives than ours. We must never stop learning, working and improving. You must strive to be owners and entrepreneurs, not simply satisfied with being workers or living on state welfare.
“We must also have love in our communities. Greet the day with love, for it is the most valuable key to success. Never allow your heart to become small and bitter; rather, share it, and it will grow and warm everyone and everything around you. While I encourage you to live with love in your heart, I also say do not crawl on your belly for anyone. It’s either peace or total war, nothing in between.”
Persad-Bissessar, the first woman ever to lead the party and a government in Trinidad and Tobago, said that “more than just a party, the UNC is a belief system rooted in the spirit of resistance, freedom, equality, justice, unity, hope, and faith.
“It is a spirit that lived in our poor, marginalised ancestors, yet who never allowed themselves to fall by the wayside.”
Persad-Bissessar, who has led the UNC since January 2010, said that this is why “the leadership of our party must never fall into the hands of weak men and women” and that “finesse and diplomacy must be backed up with steeliness and savagery when required to defend the UNC membership.
“A UNC leader must never allow our party to be hijacked by the local drug mafia and the fake eat-a-food elite as happened to the PNM (main opposition People’s National Movement),” she wrote, adding that she is “committed to working tirelessly to ensure your voices are heard and our nation moves in the right direction”.
The UNC was formed on April 30, 1989 with its founder, Basdeo Panday, serving as the party’s first leader and later becoming the first Indo-Trinidadian prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
CMC/jh/ir/2026