By Darcel Choy Tuesday, June 1 2010

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Faithful leaders: Senior Counsel Kenneth Lalla, left, and Spiritual Head of SWAHA Pundit Hardeo Persad at the Swadeshi Festival, Learning Resource Cen...

President of SWAHA Kelvin Ramkissoon has committed to work with the new government to eradicate poverty and to ensure the development of youth and the society at large. He was speaking at SWAHA’s Swadeshi Festival and awards ceremony at the Learning Resource Centre, University of the West Indies, St Augustine on Sunday evening.

“We will work with any government that shares the ideology that we share. We share an ideology of spiritual humanitarian and charitable work. We will partner with any government throughout our various networks, temples, our institutions, our centres and all our programmes in youth and youth development,” he said.

Spiritual Head of SWAHA, Pundit Hardeo Persad, in his address also drew reference to the new government and first woman Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar saying that time is the most powerful force around.

“When it’s a man’s time to be on top, nothing can move him, when it is time for him to fall, nothing could stop him.

When it’s time for a woman to be on top, nothing can stop her. We must do what we have to do and live by principle, no man is God and everything comes in time. We have to understand the power of time, we are all controlled by this power of time,” he said.

Persad pointed that there has been a focus on the number 24 and explained what that meant in the scriptures. Persad-Bissessar has noted the significance of the number 24, as it was on January 24 that she was elected political leader of the UNC, she was elected prime minister on May 24 and is now her 24th year as a politician. On the election hustings, she joked about the Play Whe mark in which 24 is queen.

“There are 24 manifestations and 12 is a factor of 24. There are 12 sovereign principles in the scripture and now we are celebrating 165 years of Arrival Day and when you add up the numerals, you get 12. Time has come for this situation, it is in the scriptures,” Persad explained.

He noted that proper leadership is very critical and is all about sharing the responsibility for it to benefit the country.

“Leadership is about compromise and understanding, shared responsibility. In any organisation, there are different layers of leadership, but every single layer is important, and it is critical to the growth of the organisation or the country as the case may be. Everybody’s a leader in his or her own right, without proper leadership we can’t go anywhere,” Persad said.

Senior Counsel Kenneth Lalla believes the celebration of Indian Arrival Day should also be a reflection of the trials and tribulations which East Indians were subjected to, and which they had to endure during their term of indentureship in Trinidad. Lalla said the celebrations should be a timely reminder to all to examine their history.

“We should also analyse on an ongoing basis the philosophy and the rationale and the merits and demerits of the legacy of the indentured and the extensive degree of the impact on the development on Trinidad and Tobago prior and subsequent to our independence. Indians should also resort to liberate themselves from the shackles of defeat and the psychology of subservience,” he said.