Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat­narayan Ma­haraj has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's of at­tempt­ing to per­form a "con job" on the pop­u­la­tion through a state­ment to the Par­lia­ment on the con­tro­ver­sial church on the Heights of Gua­napo.

Ma­haraj stressed that Man­ning failed to ad­dress con­cerns about his se­cre­tive be­hav­iour on al­leged links be­tween him and the con­tro­ver­sial church, The Light of the Light House of the Lord Je­sus Christ. Ma­haraj al­so said that no one en­gaged in den­i­grat­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's faith al­though Man­ning called on born-again Chris­tians such as him­self to stop their re­li­gion from be­ing per­se­cut­ed. He said: "No­body has den­i­grat­ed the faith. Every­body has com­plained about the se­cre­cy that sur­rounds the church. Every­body has com­plained about the se­cre­cy and non-re­sponse of Man­ning. "That is what the com­plains are about," Ma­haraj said, dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "Rather than re­spond­ing to it (the mys­tery sur­round­ing the church), he (Man­ning) kept the se­cret go­ing (and) no­body com­plained (about his). Any­body could be any­thing (re­li­gion) that they want to be. "And here we have a mys­te­ri­ous church, no­body know about it, Man­ning must come for­ward and tell us ex­act­ly who this per­son is and who is get­ting it." It was al­leged that church was be­ing built us­ing state re­sources in an im­prop­er man­ner to fa­cil­i­tate Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er or seer­woman, Rev Ju­liana Pe­na, who was al­so known as Ju­liana Pierre De­venish.

In a 53-minute state­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Man­ning sought to dis­pel con­cerns about re­la­tion­ships drawn be­tween him and the church. Man­ning said it was "gross­ly in­ac­cu­rate" to re­fer his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er as a "seer­woman" or a "prophet­ess." Ma­haraj said Man­ning's state­ment was "an at­tempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the pop­u­la­tion. "This was an at­tempt at what I would nor­mal­ly de­scribe as a con job...I think Mr Man­ning has not come clean," he said. "He is try­ing to shroud the whole de­bate that has been tak­ing place for the last week on all kinds of ex­tra­ne­ous things. "With­out an­swer­ing the ques­tion, you bring in all sorts of is­sues that are not rel­e­vant to be­ing up­front on the State lands and a church go­ing up there." Ma­haraj al­so sought to de­fend the Ma­ha Sab­ha against Man­ning's state­ments that de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools like those of the Ma­ha Sab­ha were ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries of state lands, such as The Light of the Light House of the Lord Je­sus Christ.

"His (Man­ning's) whole re­sponse and his at­tack, I call it an at­tack, on the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards and our school sys­tems are re­gret­table," Ma­haraj said. "Mr Man­ning talks about how much mon­ey they pump in­to the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards. He did not men­tion that we pro­vide 80 per cent of the sec­ondary schools place­ments. "Mr Man­ning did not even men­tion that, or that the qual­i­ty of the stu­dents that come out of the de­nom­i­na­tion schools and col­leges are way above aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. Man­ning did not men­tion that. He ig­nored it to­tal­ly." He said the State was the biggest landown­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go and that "if we are do­ing the job that the State can­not do, which is to pro­vide to­tal ser­vices–re­li­gious ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion­al ser­vices–then ob­vi­ous­ly the State must make these lands avail­able to us be­cause we are do­ing the job that they can­not do."