Anand Ram­lo­gan

The bomb­shell from UNC Chief Whip Jack Warn­er that there is a church be­ing built in the Heights of Gua­napo, in Ari­ma, with the ac­tive sup­port and in­volve­ment of PM Man­ning, ought not to have ex­plod­ed, but it has. Man­ning's in­ept han­dling of the is­sue has opened up a can of worms that has served to ex­pose the syco­phan­tic re­la­tion­ship that ex­ists in Cab­i­net. Our ca­lyp­so­ni­ans must be glee­ful­ly work­ing on next year's com­po­si­tions al­ready. PNM par­ty chair­man Con­rad Enill said there was noth­ing wrong in some ob­scure–and as yet un­known en­ti­ty–hir­ing Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Co, brought here by the state, as part of a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment, on a pri­vate project. Who ap­plied for the ex­ten­sion of these work­ers' work per­mits? What was the rea­son giv­en?

Who ap­proved it? Has OS­HA been in­formed, so that the work­ers are not ex­ploit­ed? Mr Enill cit­ed no ex­am­ples to sup­port his idle boast that it was not un­com­mon for Asian com­pa­nies to stay on in Trinidad and use it as its head­quar­ters for Latin Amer­i­ca, but there are dozens of Chi­nese restau­rants that have sprung up in every nook and cran­ny of T&T with "con­struc­tion work­ers" whose work per­mits au­tho­rise them to re­main and work here on spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment projects.

Sky­scrap­ers re­main emp­ty

I don't see any new cor­po­rate head­quar­ters for these com­pa­nies, and the wa­ter­front sky­scrap­ers re­main emp­ty. The dusty road lead­ing to the con­struc­tion site has sud­den­ly been paved at a cost of over $3 mil­lion. Con­struc­tion con­tin­ues apace, de­spite the lack of ap­provals. The church was con­cep­tu­alised in 2005, and or­ders were al­leged­ly giv­en to Calder Hart's Ude­cott to "ex­e­cute de­sign and en­gi­neer­ing" by the Prime Min­is­ter him­self. Ude­cott has de­nied this. It seems as if Man­ning is the po­lit­i­cal god­fa­ther of this new church, and who vex, vex! Man­ning's per­son­al vis­its were, no doubt, meant to cre­ate a pow­er­ful shield over this project by per­son­al as­so­ci­a­tion. Eye­brows rose when Man­ning es­tab­lished the short-lived Min­istry of Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Af­fairs.

The PM's band, Di­vine Echoes, re­ceives some mil­lions in grants an­nu­al­ly, cur­rent­ly ex­ceed­ing a to­tal of $10m. This band is, in sub­stance and ef­fect, an Afro-Chris­t­ian band. What if oth­er PMs fol­low suit? Man­ning's mis­han­dling of this is­sue has the po­ten­tial to up­set the del­i­cate bal­ance that has been struck be­tween the State and the Church since in­de­pen­dence. The dis­crim­i­na­tion suf­fered by the Ma­ha Sab­ha in the ra­dio li­cence case is not some­thing that should be for­got­ten, as the Privy Coun­cil crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for twice mis­lead­ing the courts, in an at­tempt to con­ceal the dis­crim­i­na­tion. There is a ru­mour that the gov­ern­ment is in­di­rect­ly sup­port­ing con­struc­tion of this church, via do­na­tions from state en­ter­pris­es.

I would have dis­missed this, but on­ly last week Sen­a­tor Wade Mark crit­i­cised state-owned Petrotrin for its re­li­gious do­na­tions. He cit­ed Petrotrin's gen­er­ous do­na­tions of $1.3 mil­lion to St Pe­ter's RC and An­gli­can Church­es and an­nu­al do­na­tions of up to $500,000 to the Small En­ter­prise and Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SE­BA). Has Petrotrin ever made such a sub­stan­tial do­na­tion to any oth­er re­li­gious group?

While Mr Man­ning's of­fice has re­leased a state­ment deny­ing that he owns the church, no in­for­ma­tion has been giv­en about his in­volve­ment. Own­er­ship of the church was not even ques­tioned. This is wor­ry­ing. The Rev Ju­liana Pe­na has been ex­posed as the PM's "see-er-woman,"

Diplo­mat­ic cour­te­sies?

She is ac­cord­ed diplo­mat­ic cour­te­sies and trav­els at tax­pay­ers' ex­pense with the Prime Min­is­ter. The Zim­bab­we Her­ald, dat­ed Ju­ly 22, 2005, stat­ed: "Pres­i­dent Mu­gabe yes­ter­day met a spe­cial en­voy of the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, PM Patrick Man­ning, at State House. "Speak­ing af­ter the meet­ing, Rev Ju­liana Pe­na, of the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Church, said she had come to Zim­bab­we to share with the Pres­i­dent a vi­sion that she had re­ceived from God, in which he re­vealed his de­sire to see change in Africa." Does the good Rev­erend ad­vise the PM on mat­ters of State? What mat­ters of de­ci­sion-mak­ing are del­e­gat­ed to her? What are her qual­i­fi­ca­tions to do this? What is the ex­tent of her ad­vice?

How much in­flu­ence has she on the Prime Min­is­ter? It re­al­ly makes no sense to ask these le­git­i­mate ques­tions, though. Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde per­son­i­fied and em­bod­ied the at­ti­tude of the Gov­ern­ment when she said: "No. Well, I do not even know what the con­tro­ver­sy is. I do not know what the con­tro­ver­sy is. Ent the Prime Min­is­ter has said that he is a Chris­t­ian? What is the prob­lem?"

Nuff said; just shut up and let the man build his church with our mon­ey.