01/08/2026
PRIME MINISTER SPEAKS OUT AGAINST DIVISIVENESS AT EMANCIPATION CELEBRATIONS
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar called for citizens of TT to choose unity at her address during the office of the Prime Minister (OPM)’s African Emancipation Day Celebrations at the Diplomatic Centre on July 30.
Noting recent racist comments directed at her, the Prime Minister said people have marred TT’s rich history by using race to divide.
“Too often, disagreement has descended into disrespect, political differences into personal hostility and race has been invoked, not to deepen understanding but to sow division.
“What saddened me was something far deeper,” she said. “Sometimes we forget our humanity and get caught up in the language of division. No nation can ever survive in that regard.
“What remains important, men, women and children of this great land, is that together we aspire, together we achieve.”
Persad-Bissessar said Emancipation was the beginning of the story of modern Trinidad and Tobago, noting that with the freedom of Africans and the abolition of slavery came the opportunities for people all over the world to make TT the land it is today.
“Our journeys began differently but our destiny became one. That is the enduring legacy of Emancipation – a nation born from the triumph of the enslaved African men and women, enriched by every community that followed and strengthened by the enduring truth that our diversity is not our division, but our greatest strength.”