For the second time in its 27-year history, the Express "Individual of the Year" Award has been won not by a single individual but by a group of individuals who, together, formed a collective whose achievements last year were "the most deserving of the highest commendation of excellence".
As was the case in 1989 when the Strike Squad, inclusive of its coach, Everald "Gally" Cummings won the accolade, the 2005 award, perhaps predictably, has gone to the national football team, inclusive of Jack Warner, "Special Adviser" to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation.
The "Soca Warriors", as they have come to be popularly known and, indeed, promoted won Trinidad and Tobago one of the coveted spots in next June's Fifa World Cup Finals when they defeated Bahrain by a 2-1 margin in the play-off, coming from the bottom of the pack with a late surge to, at least partially, lay the football ghosts of 1973 and 1989.
In 1973, Trinidad and Tobago was denied a World Cup spot, ironically enough in the very Germany, when a corrupt referee gave the decisive game and, therefore, the spot to the Haitian hosts even though the Trinbagonians got the ball into the back of the net fully five times during the course of the match. Subsequently, Fifa banned the referee for life but that was no consolation for the nation, coming as it did after the fact.
Then on November 19, 1989-a date etched in the national memory -Trinidad and Tobago, needing only a draw against the United States to qualify, managed to lose the game 1-0 and deny themselves a place in Italy. On November 16, 2005- a date that will be long remembered-Trinidad and Tobago, having drawn 1-1 at home, defeated Bahrain 1-0 in Bahrain to spark of two full days of celebrations.
Noting the tremendous turn-out along the East/West Corridor, Central Trinidad, San Fernando and the "Deep South" several commentators, led by Prime Minister Patrick Manning observed that the successful Soca Warriors" had managed to unite Trinidadians and Tobagonians in a way that none of its leaders, including politicians, had been able to do.
Perhaps fittingly enough, the judges found it impossible to divorce the "Soca Warriors" from Warner. Warner it was who had put out millions of his own money and who had operated both behind the scenes and in the full public glare, to put together a successful management team, not the least being Dutch coach Leo Beenhakker.
If football lifted the spirits of the nation in 2005, crime had caused it to drop to an all time low. It was in this forbidding context that a hitherto all but anonymous Stephen Cadiz emerged to chair the Keith Noel 136 Committee following the brutal murder of his beloved Belmont employee whose name was to enjoy a fame in death that it never had in life, the committee walking up and down the country to acquire over 120,000 signatures in an Anti-Crime Petition and then marching through Port of Spain in a successful multiethnic anti-crime march in what remains one of the most notable civic protest actions the country has ever seen. That was hardly the culmination of their efforts since their anti-crime calls continue through a series of imaginative press ads. Small wonder that the judges unanimously voted Cadiz and his band of equally concerned citizens the "Community Organisation of the Year".
Finally, the award for the "Youth of the Year" was given to Carla Monique Beach in recognition of her unstinting commitment to the fight against HIV/Aids, as one of the youngest members of the Tobago AIDS Society, the Tobago Youth Council and the youth representative for the Vision 2020 HIV/AIDS sub-committee as well as the National AIDS Coordinating Committee.