Congratulations, Trinidad and Tobago!
Congratulations to the People’s National Movement on its new mandate for the government of our nation!
Congratulations to all the victorious candidates in the election!

Congratulations to all the parties who offered themselves in the service of our country! Some may have lost, but Trinidad and Tobago won. We were able to exercise this fundamental democratic freedom in a situation free from violence and marked by much good humour. To paraphrase one commentator, even if we may sometimes wonder about the health of our democracy, it is very alive and kicking.

This election revolved around personalities, not programmes or policies. National development is about policies and programmes, not personalities.

The fact that party manifestos were published a week before the election left little room for the transparent, incisive debate which ought to be a hallmark of healthy democracy.

The previous government had a laudable set of social and educational programmes, which sought to create possibilities for the disadvantaged and broaden the safety net for the indigent.

We hope that there will be a deepening of these programmes in ways which take those who are able beyond dependency into genuine and sustained self-reliance.

At the same time, there has to be a greater effort to identify and assist those who will never be able to be self-reliant. As Catholic Social Teaching today consistently reminds us, a nation is judged not by the limitless opportunities it offers the rich, but by its sustained upliftment of its destitute and poor.

Catholics inside and outside government must remember this criterion as they make or critique policies and programmes. Too often we think, decide and act simply out of personal or class interests, even as we claim to be acting as Christians in God’s name.

Rule with love and respect

The future promises a continuing explosion in energy-fuelled wealth.
Many opportunities await us still. Many dangers lurk in the shadows.

While we seem to have accepted the drive to developed nation status, we are still uncertain about the content of that development. The materialism and greed, which accompany our wealth, may well derail us rapidly on the way to 2020.

The Prime Minister has been very gracious and magnanimous in victory. In so doing, he has set a tone for the first period of the next five years. To him and his party falls the challenge to provide us with both the economic and social leadership which we will need.

They will also have to provide an appropriate politics, which may not be necessarily all new, to meet the constitutional and political challenges which we will continue to face.

For those who may feel disenfranchised by the results of this election, the challenge is to turn the rhetoric and promises of an election campaign into work on the ground in villages and communities which will show us how the dreams they ask us to dream may become a reality.

Those who attended Mass on the day after the election will have heard the familiar words from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Do not let your love be a pretence, but sincerely prefer good to evil. Love each other as much as family should and have a profound respect for each other”(12:9-10).

One hopes that love and respect will inform the relationships and actions of those who seek to serve and govern in the new Parliament.