Clevon Raphael

?What kind of blight has be­fall­en T&T? Or more specif­i­cal­ly, the Gov­ern­ment of our twin-is­land re­pub­lic??

As the Pow­er 102FM pro­mo so suc­cinct­ly puts it, every day this coun­try just can't seem to set­tle down. When it is not the crim­i­nals ter­ror­is­ing in­no­cent cit­i­zens with un­bri­dled mur­ders and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes, we are sub­ject to con­stant jam­ming from the State in so many ways–and which with a lit­tle com­mon­sense could be avoid­ed. There are so many ex­am­ples of sit­u­a­tions in which the peo­ple are re­ceiv­ing dis­turb­ing mixed mes­sages, and in some in­stances plain con­tra­dic­to­ry be­hav­iour, from the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, start­ing with the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer him-self, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Be­cause we can­not in this space deal with every one of these de­bil­i­tat­ing sit­u­a­tions, we would just look at a few of them. Read­ers are left to ar­rive at their own con­clu­sions as to what the hell is tak­ing place in our beloved T&T, and where they think we are head­ing at this trou­bling time.

We be­gin with the church that is be­ing built by a Chi­nese com­pa­ny un­der mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in the Heights of Gua­napo. We don't know who the re­al own­ers are ex­cept that the State grant­ed the land on which this or­nate struc­ture is go­ing up. Man­ning has stat­ed quite em­phat­i­cal­ly he has no per­son­al in­ter­est in this mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar ed­i­fice but pays a se­cret vis­it to the con­struc­tion site with­out the me­dia be­ing in­vit­ed. Wouldn't it be a clear vi­o­la­tion of his pro­fessed Chris­t­ian be­liefs and prin­ci­ples if one day he is found to be play­ing any role in the church? But what could we do about it then? One of the many unan­swered ques­tions on this project is how come the Chi­nese com­pa­ny which came here to car­ry out spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment con­tracts end­ed up build­ing this church? Why did it feel it could ac­tu­al­ly start con­struc­tion with­out the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion from the state reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties? Was it em­pow­ered by the knowl­edge that be­cause of its con­nec­tions, if any at all, it could have just gone ahead and got­ten the show on the road? Up to now Man­ning has not said why he felt it nec­es­sary to vis­it the site and any how I look at it this seems to be quite an un­holy mess. With this con­tro­ver­sy still not yet over, I dare say we have not heard the worst of this–I re­frain from say­ing scan­dal for the time be­ing–be­dev­illing case.

On Sat­ur­day, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al de­nied hav­ing said in a sto­ry car­ried by this news­pa­per that re­ports of a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and his wife hav­ing a six-fig­ure ac­count in a Cay­man Is­lands bank was a hoax. The source of the re­port was the first draft of a speech the AG had in­tend­ed to be read in the Par­lia­ment and which end­ed up on the desk of a se­nior re­porter at this news­pa­per. It is not un­com­mon for pub­lic fig­ures to give re­porters ad­vance copies of their speech­es and no doubt the re­porter in this in­stance felt he had the cor­rect ver­sion and went ahead and did the sto­ry. What is baf­fling to me, and I am sure the rest of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, is what was re­spon­si­ble for the ap­par­ent abrupt change in the tenor of the doc­u­ment. One day it was re­port­ed the Cay­man Is­lands bank ac­count sto­ry was a com­plete hoax and the next day that was not the case and the mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Dr Kei­th Row­ley is not the on­ly per­son anx­ious to get to the truth of this con­fus­ing af­fair. Fi­nal­ly, let's look at an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing Man­ning and 81-year-old San Juan res­i­dent Per­cy Vil­lafana, a for­mer sup­port­er of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Read­ers would re­call that this coura­geous se­nior cit­i­zen told Mr Man­ning in no un­cer­tain man­ner that he was not wel­come at his home dur­ing a walk­a­bout in the con­stituen­cy last week. How­ev­er, this did not pre­vent the PM from walk­ing past Vil­lafana to shake the hands of a woman and young chil­dren. Of course this un­prece­dent­ed and em­bar­rass­ing act made na­tion­al news and in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day, Man­ning told the leg­is­la­ture that Per­cy was not a res­i­dent of Trinidad and that he came from Cana­da to spend the win­ter in San Juan.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the for­mer pub­lic ser­vant fired back, deny­ing Man­ning's claim. He said he was born here, lived here and would die here. And, like oth­er cit­i­zens who could af­ford to, trav­els over­seas every year to spend time with his chil­dren. My beef about this is why would any leader of a gov­ern­ment go to the lengths that Mr Man­ning did to dis­cred­it the man's ac­tion in­stead of try­ing to as­cer­tain the rea­sons for his ve­he­ment stance last week? A sen­si­ble leader would have sought to speak to Vil­lafana, per­haps pri­vate­ly, to get to the root of his ob­vi­ous dis­en­chant­ment with the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and with Man­ning him­self. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Man­ning's re­ac­tions in both in­stances in San Juan and sub­se­quent­ly in the Par­lia­ment again demon­strate this ad­min­is­tra­tion's and Man­ning's dis­con­nect with the peo­ple. When any­one could con­front the head of gov­ern­ment in the man­ner in which Vil­lafana did and when ra­dio lis­ten­ers are ac­tu­al­ly agree­ing with Dr Mor­gan Job in be­rat­ing that leader, you know an ad­min­is­tra­tion is in trou­ble.

?raphael_d_righter@hot­mail.com