Clevon Raphael

?I am not a psy­chi­a­trist, psy­chol­o­gist, so­ci­ol­o­gist or even a ge­ol­o­gist, so it is im­pos­si­ble for me to fath­om how the brain of our es­teemed Prime Min­ster works.

I have tried over and over to... well not psy­cho­analyse, for I am not qual­i­fied to do so, but to at least gain some un­der­stand­ing of where he is com­ing from with his many un­seem­ly ut­ter­ances and ac­tions. I have been un­suc­cess­ful in those at­tempts but I won't give up be­cause I don't want it to be said (again) that I am con­stant­ly bash­ing the sec­ond fa­ther of the na­tion be­cause I am an­ti-PNM or an­ti-any­thing this ad­min­is­tra­tion stands for. In oth­er words, I want to give the man the ben­e­fit of the doubt on some oc­ca­sions when his crit­ics, and God knows he has ac­quired many of them in this round, go af­ter him, in many in­stances with good rea­son. One of these oc­ca­sions was his spir­it­ed, some might say evan­gel­i­cal, de­fence of his in­volve­ment, or lack of, in the still mys­te­ri­ous Gua­napo Heights church con­struc­tion project. Af­ter the na­tion's ap­petite was prop­er­ly hyped by the me­dia on yet an­oth­er scan­dal to hit Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, he promised to speak on the mat­ter and so he did last Fri­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. But at the end Mr Man­ning was un­able to bring clo­sure on this is­sue and, as he would like to say, move on.

He clev­er­ly ex­pand­ed his "ex­pla­na­tion" and gave a dis­ser­ta­tion on church-state re­la­tions, which in a re­al sense had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the vi­tal ques­tions per­tain­ing to his role in the church's con­struc­tion. In­stead of sat­is­fy­ing the cit­i­zen­ry that every­thing was above board, our beloved head of gov­ern­ment, in my opin­ion, in­flamed many souls by por­tray­ing him­self and born-again Chris­tians as the vic­tims of per­se­cu­tion for their re­li­gious be­liefs. If that charge was made by any oth­er cit­i­zen one would have dis­missed it as the rant­i­ng and rav­ing of a re­li­gious zealot. How­ev­er, when those words can em­anate from the lips of the head of gov­ern­ment, who pro­fess­es to be a born-again Chris­t­ian, we can­not help but sit up and take note of what po­ten­tial dam­age could emerge there­from.

To briefly re­state some salient points in this af­fair:

�2 A church in Gua­napo Heights es­ti­mat­ed to cost $30 mil­lion is be­ing con­struct­ed by a Chi­nese firm which has large con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment on sev­er­al projects.

�2 The Prime Min­is­ter has been linked to it via a woman who he ad­mit­ted last Fri­day was his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er, what­ev­er that is.

�2 The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ad­mit­ted to vis­it­ing the site on one oc­ca­sion, al­though vil­lagers said it was more like three times.

Ob­vi­ous­ly Mr Man­ning must have re­alised, or ought to have known, that with his name be­ing called it would raise the an­ten­na of the peo­ple. Es­pe­cial­ly those wicked jour­nal­ists who have noth­ing else to do but sit in their news­rooms just wait­ing for any bit of in­for­ma­tion that would em­bar­rass the Prime Min­is­ter, ac­cord­ing to PNM sym­pa­this­ers. Man­ning said the church did not be­long to him and that the mon­ey to fund its con­struc­tion was not com­ing from the State. We have to take his word as gospel un­til proven oth­er­wise. Among the is­sues he did not clar­i­fy was why he had to vis­it the con­struc­tion site. If he has no spe­cial in­ter­est in the church, which ac­cord­ing to the de­signs would cer­tain­ly be a very im­pos­ing ed­i­fice, why would he feel nec­es­sary to se­cret­ly vis­it the work in progress? Why wasn't the me­dia in­vit­ed to cov­er that spe­cial event? It is not every day that our Prime Min­is­ter vis­its such a fa­cil­i­ty be­ing built, as we would say in lo­cal par­lance, be­hind God's back.

What would he say or what could we the peo­ple do if Man­ning, true to his promise, turns up as a preach­er at the church at the end of his po­lit­i­cal tenure? An­oth­er ques­tion is how did this Chi­nese firm man­age to land that juicy con­tract? My in­for­ma­tion is that hav­ing en­tered the coun­try to do spec­i­fied projects it could not just ups and en­gage in "PJs," or pri­vate jobs, just so. Un­like most of our lo­cal con­trac­tors, this Chi­nese out­fit must have ex­treme­ly high con­tacts at of­fi­cial lev­el. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists can eas­i­ly con­nect the dots in this af­fair and come up with cer­tain con­clu­sions and even if they are wrong Mr Man­ning has no one but him­self to blame for this. He can­not on one hand talk about trans­paren­cy in Gov­ern­ment's ac­tiv­i­ties and do ex­act­ly the op­po­site when the heat is turned on. If a face­less prophet­ess is the per­son be­hind this eye-pop­ping project, why doesn't she come out of hid­ing or what­ev­er and take the heat off our Prime Min­is­ter?

Mr Man­ning chose to tread a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous path mak­ing that sil­ly, il­log­i­cal, stu­pid, and base­less charge of re­li­gious per­se­cu­tion, an al­le­ga­tion that is not worth re­peat­ing even in a rum shop or fu­ner­al par­lour. We cer­tain­ly have not heard the end of this sto­ry and don't be sur­prised if it takes a cer­tain course which would se­ri­ous­ly em­bar­rass cer­tain big boys who feel they can con­tin­ue at­tempt­ing to fool the peo­ple.