Caption: President Christine Kangaloo
By Alicia Chamely
PRESIDENT Christine Kangaloo is urging Trinidad and Tobago to learn from the adversity of 2025 and apply those lessons to creating a brighter future in 2026.
“As we leave 2025 behind and enter the new year that is 2026, we leave behind a year that has had its fill of adversity, and we face the call to learn from the lessons that adversity has taught and to apply them to the task of creating a better future,” she stated on Tuesday in the President’s annual New Years message to the nation.
Kangaloo noted that while adversity is “seldom a welcome guest,” it increases our resilience, enhances our creativity and “reminds us of who we are and what we are capable of.”
The President stated there was much that “held us down” in 2025, that we must be left behind.
“There is much that weighed us down or held us back in 2025, that we ought properly to leave behind,” she stated, “Our penchant for self-derision (“Trinidad and Tobago is not a real place”); our seeming inability (or refusal) to moderate the caustic language we use in public discourse; and our willingness to accept less than that to which we are entitled from those who should know (and do) better.”
Kangaloo said, despite 2025 being a difficult one for our nation, there was still much to be celebrated.
“In 2025, we revelled, with justifiable abandon, in the heroic feats of Keshorn Walcott, Jereem Richards and the Trinbago Knight Riders. We also saw our democracy at its finest, in the way of yet another smooth and peaceful transition of power, away from one government and to another. Our many achievements across the areas of sport, academia and culture, also added to what was truly a memorable year in our country’s history,” she reminded the country.
Addressing the upcoming year, she stated, “As we face the next twelve months, we should aim to learn from and apply the lessons which the adversities of 2025 have taught us. 2026 will undoubtedly bring its challenges. But I remain confident that, standing side by side, and with boundless faith in our destiny, we will rise to meet and overcome them.”
“We will do so if we return to loving ourselves fully, and to practicing greater levels of patriotism. We will do so if we are brave enough to identify the areas in which we can improve, and if we resolve to do better. We will do so if each of us considers the roles we play in the life of our nation, ask ourselves where we can grow in responsibility, discipline and respect, and how we can contribute to building a country of which we can all be proud and glad,” she continued.
Kangaloo highlighted the significance of 2026 being the year Trinidad and Tobago celebrates its fiftieth anniversary of its republican status and called on the nation to recommit to self-determination and patriotism to commemorate this milestone.
The President stated, “As we commemorate this milestone, let us lean into our potential as a nation. Let us recommit to shaping our own future, with the confidence, the patriotism and the unity of purpose that a Republican nation demands.”
Kangaloo ended her message extending her best wishes for the new year, adding, “May 2026 bring renewed strength, harmony and success, and may God bless our nation.”
