described in terms of the common good of everybody, an atmosphere of peace, tranquility, security and I must say affluence – a minimum level of human dignity for all citizens. Of course, there would be the few who are very rich and they say nobody should be jealous of those, who become very rich, hoping that they become very rich too but not by stealing but by working hard or by good luck.

You know you can be rich either by hard work or by what we call it, good luck being at the right place at the right time. Whoever is rich in that way should thank God and we thank God with them but the rest of us at least deserve to have a minimum of standard of living, where we can live like decent human beings and when we ask for that, it is like we are asking too much. It is the minimum that someone expects from any group that takes control of the government and being in control of government have all the access to the nation to make sure the right thing is been done.

In my own opinion, I would say this is the challenge before all of us now. I don’t really see any danger that some soldiers will come to take us back to military rule. What I see that is more dangerous is if we continue with a democracy that is only fake, that doesn’t deliver good governance. The wonderful thing with this is that whether we have good governance or not, it is not a matter of academics or not, we don’t need a doctorate to know whether we are living in a peaceful and harmonious nation and those in government from the top to the bottom must realise that this is their major responsibility. I will say that looking at the logistics towards that is simply to pursue the common good of all and the common good isn’t too difficult to identify.

One of the best ways of knowing the common good is to see the state of those who are the weakest and poorest, because the strength of a chain is judged by its weakest link. No matter how the nation can consider it is big, no matter how many big buildings and big structure we put up; if there are too many people who are in abject poverty, then, the nation isn’t great. Our nation’s greatness will be judged by how we treat our poorest and weakest members including our most disabled. In this, the issue of gender equality comes up but we are not looking at as a priority as the social inequality we have cuts across gender. As I have reached my 50 years of priesthood I look back and ask God give me whatever more years you wish to give me. I pray you give me good health in body and mind to be able to continue the task of working for a nation that would be really united and prosperous under God, and our constitution says something close to that. So, it has been there for long and I am not inventing anything; we already have it in our constitution. I want to thank you again for this coming together and want to tell you that it is our job to pray to God to help all of us that are in this country but I also give special blessings and assistance to those, who claim to be our rulers so that they may do the right thing for the sake of all of us and let the Lord bless the city. May we not labour in vain!