Dana See­ta­hal

It took a week for the Prime Min­is­ter to re­spond to MP Jack Warn­er's ex­pres­sions of con­cern in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in re­spect of the church be­ing con­struct­ed in the Heights of Gua­napo. When the PM did make his hour-long state­ment, it was not con­vinc­ing. Re­fer­ring to him­self con­tin­u­al­ly in the third per­son (a habit which he fails to ap­pre­ci­ate could make him the sub­ject of ridicule), the PM sought to at­tack the me­dia, the Op­po­si­tion and all those who crit­i­cised his re­la­tion­ship with the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ Church. Claim­ing that it was akin to re­li­gious per­se­cu­tion to chal­lenge his as­so­ci­a­tion with the Full Gospel Move­ment, the PM main­tained he had a right to con­sult whomev­er he wished for spir­i­tu­al ad­vice. He ad­mit­ted that the "Prime Min­is­ter was con­sult­ing some­body who was an or­dained pas­tor..."

Even in his ob­vi­ous at­tempt at de­flec­tion, the PM still failed to ad­dress key con­cerns aris­ing from his in­volve­ment with the Gua­napo church, dis­tort­ed sev­er­al oth­er mat­ters, and raised new mis­giv­ings. The is­sue was nev­er the grant of State funds to re­li­gious bod­ies. It is com­mon knowl­edge that, time and again, re­li­gious bod­ies have moved gov­ern­ments of the day for lands or fund­ing to fa­cil­i­tate pro­vi­sion of prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tion for their flock and, time and again, the State has pos­i­tive­ly re­spond­ed. The is­sue is, to coin the new catch­words, one of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. If the for­mer Op­po­si­tion Leader (when he was PM) had been the head of a Cab­i­net that had ap­proved lands to con­struct a tem­ple run by his pun­dit, se­ri­ous ques­tions would have been asked.

The coun­try is thus not ask­ing Mr Man­ning the de­tails of his re­la­tion­ship with Pas­tor Pe­na out of sim­ple fast­ness. No one is even chal­leng­ing his right to have that in­di­vid­ual as a spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er. The time to do so or ask ques­tions about this was a few years ago, when Ben­ny Hinn, who was in T&T at the time, al­leged that the PM brought to a meet­ing they were to have, a cer­tain woman, who it was claimed had "gifts." It was re­port­ed that Hinn re­fused to have the woman lay her hands on his per­son, and in re­ject­ing her dubbed the PM "a fool­ish man." The PM him­self lat­er ex­pressed re­gret at Hinn's re­sponse, as far as I can rec­ol­lect. The point is that the PM's as­so­ci­a­tion with a spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er has been in the pub­lic do­main for some time.

What is dif­fer­ent now is the al­lo­ca­tion of State re­sources to build a church re­port­ed­ly head­ed by the spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er (who it is said laid the foun­da­tion stone for the build­ing). The mat­ter came up be­fore Cab­i­net twice. One won­ders whether Cab­i­net would have bur­dened it­self with this ap­proval, not once, but twice, for such a very small church (what is the size of the flock?), were it not for the PM's con­nec­tion to the leader. More sig­nif­i­cant is the rev­e­la­tion that the req­ui­site ap­provals for con­struc­tion have not been grant­ed, but work con­tin­ues apace. Even the PM, in his state­ment in Par­lia­ment, ac­knowl­edged that the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning De­part­ment had tak­en a de­ci­sion not to ap­prove the con­struc­tion.

The head of Tu­na­puna-Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, un­der whose aegis Gua­napo Heights falls, stat­ed that they had al­so giv­en no ap­proval, and a quit no­tice would be is­sued to cease con­struc­tion in a few days. This cir­cum­stance alone ought to have giv­en the PM cause to pause, but in­stead he blithe­ly states that he ex­pects the T&CP to "con­duct busi­ness prop­er­ly," now that a Cab­i­net note, ap­proved over three years ago, has been brought to their at­ten­tion. Well! If this note is sup­posed to make such a dif­fer­ence, why didn't the own­ers bring it to the at­ten­tion of T&CP three years ago? What is the PM's in­ter­est or busi­ness now, in see­ing that the ap­proval is giv­en if this church is like any oth­er church to whom the Gov­ern­ment grants state re­sources?

This ques­tion of breach­es of the law, which Cab­i­net may be ac­cused of sanc­tion­ing, ex­tends not on­ly to the lack of ap­provals for con­struc­tion, but to the bold con­tin­u­a­tion of such con­struc­tion with the pub­lic knowl­edge that the con­struc­tion is il­le­gal. Fur­ther, no ex­pla­na­tion has been of­fered as to how (as the PM ac­knowl­edged) is it that Chi­nese are build­ing the church. Where did they come from?

Chi­nese labour­ers have been brought to T&T un­der group work per­mits is­sued by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, to work on con­struc­tion sites for state projects. If there are any oth­er cir­cum­stances in which such work per­mits are is­sued, the Gov­ern­ment owes it to the pub­lic to make it known. In short, were these Chi­nese who are build­ing the church brought here to work on gov­ern­ment projects?

One mat­ter that the PM re­ferred to in his as­ser­tion of re­li­gious un­fair­ness was the fact that Gov­ern­ment re­paired and main­tained as­sist­ed sec­ondary and pri­ma­ry schools, "spend­ing large quan­ti­ties of mon­ey...on de­nom­i­na­tion­al bod­ies." In the con­text of his state­ment in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, on gifts to re­li­gious bod­ies, this was a mis­lead­ing state­ment. As­sist­ed schools are pub­lic schools un­der Sec­tion 11 of the Ed­u­ca­tion Act. They open their doors to chil­dren of what­ev­er re­li­gion, and, as we all know, de­nom­i­na­tion­al sec­ondary schools are con­sid­ered the best in the coun­try. Up un­til a few years ago, the ma­jor­i­ty of schools were de­nom­i­na­tion­al. It is, there­fore, to­tal­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the PM or any­one else to com­pare fund­ing de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools with giv­ing grants of lands to pri­vate re­li­gious bod­ies.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the PM was wrong to sug­gest that it is his pri­vate busi­ness whom he "con­sults" for spir­i­tu­al ad­vice. He is not a pri­vate cit­i­zen, but the head of our gov­ern­ment. As such, he is head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. It is, there­fore, an is­sue of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as to whom he con­sults for ad­vice, spir­i­tu­al or oth­er­wise. It can im­pact on the en­tire coun­try.