Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde Says State of Emergency a Signal of Societal Failure

Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde says the government’s recent State of Emergency signals a societal failure. In his remarks on Emancipation Day, Hyde was critical of the SOE and questioned whether successive governments have failed, given the continuous use of SOEs. Yesterday, he weighed in on the comments and the country’s current state.

Cordel Hyde, Deputy Prime Minister: “Well if you listen to the entirety of the speech all thousand and fifty words of the speech you would find that those eight words are not so….they’re not as critical as the fact that we are not in a good place in this country and our communities are not in a good place and particularly our black communities and that what’s happening now really really hurts our grandparents and our parents because they could not have envisioned fifty years ago that we would be in this situation right now. Like I can tell you whenever I talk to my father like he laments that fact that fifty years ago the black community there was so much love and now we are here at this point where we’re killing each other wantonly, mercilessly and so the speech was about saying that all of us in government, outside of government, our families, our schools, our entire communities have to take a stock of where we are and see what it is that we need to do better and see how it is we can come together because ultimately we’re one people no matter how we look, no matter where we come from, no matter what our names are, no matter who our parents are we are one people and when one family or one community goes awry the entire country goes awry. And so it was about taking stock and taking responsibility for where we are and so that is within that context that those eight words appeared out of the thousand and fifty words I think.”

The SOE comes to an end on September 24.