Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

In­stead of ex­or­cis­ing un­seen de­mon­ic spir­its that are fright­en­ing school­girls, Pres­by­ter­ian Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh says there should be ex­or­cism of crime, es­pi­onage and il­le­gal wire­tap­ping in T&T. Speak­ing at the 115th an­niver­sary ser­vice of the Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Teelucks­ingh said so­cial prob­lems have con­tin­ued to rise, de­spite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of re­li­gion. "In T&T, there is so much re­li­gion...We have plen­ty re­li­gion, plen­ty prayers and end­less church­es, tem­ples, mosques and wor­ship cen­tres, built in every vil­lage, town and city," he said. "Against this back­ground with so much prayers and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, why is it that in the last sev­en days at least 12 per­sons were bru­tal­ly mur­dered? "One es­ti­mate says more than 450 per­sons were mur­dered over the past 11 months. Why are we un­able to con­trol the use of guns–a sym­bol of fear and ter­ror in this land."

Some of the peo­ple who use these weapons, Teelucks­ingh said, come from "churchy" fam­i­lies. "We have end­less rob­beries, too many to be re­port­ed...We have lost re­spect for hu­man life even though we prac­tise re­li­gion," he con­tend­ed. He said peo­ple must be­gin to ques­tion whether true re­li­gious val­ues were re­al­ly be­ing up­held in T&T. "The ques­tion is where have we gone wrong?" Teelucks­ingh asked. "We could ex­or­cise the oc­ca­sion­al un­seen demons that fright­en school­girls, but we can­not deal with the re­al hor­ror that ex­ists in the school, when school­boys rape school­girls, or when a school­boy stabs a class­mate to death. "These are the things we must deal with, rather than the un­seen spir­its of the oth­er world." He al­so ex­plained that the peo­ple in­volved in the Cli­co scan­dal were al­so church­go­ers.

"Even our pol­i­cy­mak­ers grew up on re­li­gion, yet they are en­gag­ing in il­le­gal acts of es­pi­onage," Teelucks­ingh said. "The re­cent spy­ing scan­dal with the il­le­gal wire­tap­ping–the in­va­sion of peo­ple's pri­va­cy–on­ly ex­pos­es how lit­tle we re­spect oth­ers in this coun­try." The Gov­ern­ment, he said, seemed to be en­gag­ing in a com­ic game of "spy for spy." "The re­cent ex­po­sure of il­le­gal wire­tap­ping does not seem to have not served in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, but rather spy­ing pro­vid­ed for the per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty of some in­se­cure per­son," he said.

Af­ter the ser­mon, Teelucks­ingh as­sist­ed in the turn­ing of the sod to be­gin con­struc­tion of an ex­ten­sion to the church. The project, ex­pect­ed to cost $800,000, will pro­vide ad­di­tion­al con­gre­ga­tion­al space as well as an au­di­to­ri­um to host events.