By My fellow Jamaicans at home and abroad, visitors, I greet you with all the freshness, promise and hope of this New Year's Day. A new chapter unfolds, a new scene opens, and a new note is struck. New possibilities await us.
What will we make of the blank page which 2014 represents?
My personal wish for you is that this year will bring you closer to the achievement of your dreams and aspirations; that this will be the year you will make the breakthroughs; and that this will be the year when the Lord will enlarge your borders. My wish is that this will be your year of Jubilee, and that the Lord will bless you and your family.
My deepest wish for us as a nation is that we can forge a unity of spirit and purpose that will amaze not just others, but ourselves. I wish we could come together in a way we have never done before; that we could mobilize all our energy and passion to build Jamaica, land we love. We owe it to ourselves and to our children.
We know that when Jamaicans unite to achieve something, nothing can defeat us! We need to channel that same energy and unity into national development. We can do it, We must do it!
We have to determine this year, for example, that the monster of crime must be slain. We can't sit back and watch our nation's hopes go up in gunsmoke.
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Fellow Jamaicans, the Government can't do it alone. Fighting crime takes a united effort.
As a people and as a culture, we have to set our face against criminality.
This must be the year when we as Jamaicans say with every fiber our being, "enough is enough!" where crime is concerned.
The Government has been doing its part and will redouble its efforts in 2014 to work toward a safe and secure Jamaica.
We hope to pass what has been dubbed the anti-gang legislation in the first quarter of this calendar year as well as the important DNA legislation.
Among the record 40 pieces of legislation that we passed in Parliament last year were:
