Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have called on cit­i­zens to re­flect on the val­ues of re­silience, cre­ativ­i­ty, and shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as T&T cel­e­brates its 63rd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

In her na­tion­al mes­sage, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo ac­knowl­edged that this year’s cel­e­bra­tions took place un­der a state of emer­gency, prompt­ing changes to tra­di­tion­al ob­ser­vances. She not­ed that these ad­just­ments have cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for new and in­no­v­a­tive ways to com­mem­o­rate the day and high­light­ed the na­tion’s long his­to­ry of over­com­ing ad­ver­si­ty.

Kan­ga­loo cit­ed icon­ic ex­am­ples of na­tion­al in­ge­nu­ity, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan from dis­card­ed oil drums, the evo­lu­tion of Car­ni­val from colo­nial-era gath­er­ings, and the adap­ta­tion of es­tate ma­te­ri­als in­to the dhan­tal. She al­so ref­er­enced the per­sis­tence of re­li­gious prac­tices that sur­vived colo­nial sup­pres­sion, point­ing to the re­source­ful­ness of the peo­ple and their ca­pac­i­ty to rise above chal­lenges.