Barbados has fought through adversity but the best is yet to come, Prime Minster Mia Amor Mottley told the nation during yesterday’s Ceremonial Parade and National Honours Ceremony at Kensington Oval to mark the country’s 58th anniversary of Independence. “This has not been an easy year. We had the ravages of Hurricane Beryl devastate our fishing industry. Ninety per cent of our fishing industry has been affected.
And we have found it possible to endure the worst aspects of slavery and colonialism.
“And as we live today, we are turning from pandemic to cost of living, from cost of living to climate, from climate to violence and instability and assault weapons. And I say to my brothers and sisters from the US [United States] Congress, we in the Caribbean pay a heavy price for your Second Amendment rights,” she said.
Mottley told the gathering they could not have known a year ago the devastation to come. She said they also continued to struggle to come to grips with what guns could do in the communities, inciting panic and fear.
Spirit of hope
“We need to find better ways of removing assault weapons from the hands of the people of the Caribbean.
Because we know only too well that while guns don’t walk and talk, they kill. We need to take them from our landscape in this region.”
Despite the challenges, however, the Prime Minister said there was light on the horizon.
“We know that we have choices – we can approach life with a spirit of hope and ‘can do’, or we can find every reason why we can’t do something. We are people who depend on each other in order to achieve what we have to do to fight off all of those difficulties. We’re also a people who have been resilient.
“We are aware that we have a responsibility to renew our social services. Whether it is bringing modern legislation for child justice and protection, reforming a Victorian welfare system, reforming a 19th-century criminal justice system or creating opportunities for a new business Barbados.
Above all else, creating the platform for the acquiring of skills so that you can help us build out this nation because 2025 promises to be a boom year in terms of activity and energy and construction across this country.”
She added: “Today we stand with those problems literally melting away behind us and by next year I fully anticipate that our debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio will be down to less than 100 per cent.
Plus, our country continues not only to command the confidence of credit rating agencies and international institutions, but investors.
You can stand assured that we will always create a space for Barbadians to ensure that they never
become tenants in their own land again, but forever shall the owners of these fields and hills beyond recall.”
Mottley, addressing the youth on parade and in the stands, asked them to remember the day’s events and that they are the ones who will be the leaders of tomorrow.
“It is to you we must turn for the seeds of leadership to flourish. It is to you we must turn to ensure that we can carry on and build upon that which we have received from those who went before. It is to you that we must now secure a place and secure this nation. For while we must always tend to the older among us, it is for the young that we must build this nation.
Great people
“I ask you to join us in recognising the small things that you do at school, how you treat your fellow classmates, how you respect yourself, how you dress, how you behave, how you fight the urge to lash out at people. Let us recognise that there is always a better way to talk things out so that as we call for peace globally, let us have peace in every sphere and every corner of our countries. We ask you to stand as an inspiration for those who will come after you,” she said.
The Prime Minister also praised the life and work of the late United States Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who once attempted to become the first American black female president. She was of Barbadian and Guyanese heritage.
“We stand in the shadow of great people who came and sacrificed for us and there are so many, but today we chose to salute one – Shirley Anita Chisholm.
“As fate would have it, not only was she to achieve mighty things and to lay a pathway that still is waiting for the full fruition of its promise, but we can say many others built on her achievements as the first black woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to dare to say I am good enough to be President of the United States of America,” she said.
Mottley encouraged the audience to listen to Chisholm’s interviews on YouTube, saying her philosophies resonated with Barbados.
“I ask us therefore as a people today to stand tall.
For in so doing, I know as our Anthem says, we shall move on with strength and unity.
We shall not just be strict craftsmen of our heritage, but firm, firm, firm craftsmen of our fate,” she said. (CA)
