Kevin Baldeosingh

Un­like most re­li­gious lead­ers, Pas­tor Win­ston Cuffie al­ways backs up his claims with proof, usu­al­ly by man­u­fac­tur­ing it.

You see, Cuffie is a man who be­came the coun­try's best-known pas­tor by claim­ing to per­form mir­a­cles, hence the name of his church: Mir­a­cle Min­istries (Ful­ly Air-Con­di­tioned). In oth­er words, Pas­tor Cuffie nev­er found it suf­fi­cient to claim that he has the pow­er of God–in­stead, he had to demon­strate it by cur­ing ill­ness­es rang­ing from can­cer to di­a­betes, but not poor fash­ion sense.

Peo­ple un­der 30 years of age might not know that this is Pas­tor Cuffie's claim to fame, though, be­cause he stopped per­form­ing mir­a­cles around the same time that he be­came a mul­ti-mil­lion­aire: hence prov­ing that the re­al mir­a­cle was that God cre­at­ed so many gullible peo­ple with mon­ey to give him.

Even so, Pas­tor Cuffie nev­er changed his ap­proach in re­spect to proof, and so a cou­ple weeks ago he pub­lished a full-page news­pa­per ad of his fourth daugh­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don this year: but, so­cial me­dia soon re­vealed, pho­to-shopped her in­to a 2013 grad­u­a­tion pic­ture at the in­sti­tu­tion sand­wich­ing her be­tween two East Asian girls and re­mov­ing the be­spec­ta­cled girl with a short skirt who was orig­i­nal­ly in the pho­to­graph.

Now, since his daugh­ter ap­par­ent­ly did grad­u­ate, why did Pas­tor Cuffie feel the need to fake a pho­to of her? Did he think no­body would be­lieve he has a daugh­ter with a de­gree from for­eign un­less they saw her among white peo­ple in full colour? Did he not like the looks of the peo­ple she ac­tu­al­ly sat next to in the 2016 cer­e­mo­ny? Or does he just want to be known as Pas­tor Cuffie Shop?

It is very odd, es­pe­cial­ly since his daugh­ter seems to have a re­al de­gree from an ac­cred­it­ed uni­ver­si­ty. Even more odd was Pas­tor Cuffie's con­gre­gants leap­ing to his de­fence by quot­ing Matthew 7:1-3 "Judge not lest ye be judged," nev­er mind that they do that to ho­mo­sex­u­als and hu­man­ists and shrimp in toma­to sauce all the time. But, since the fake pic was quick­ly re­moved from the Mir­a­cle Min­istries on­line page, the odd­est as­pect is that Pas­tor Cuffie was ap­par­ent­ly wor­ried that this in­ci­dent might harm his im­age.

In fact, noth­ing is less like­ly to hap­pen, ex­cept Je­sus's sec­ond com­ing. Af­ter all, Pas­tor Cuffie's "PhD" didn't stop the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion giv­ing him a li­cence to open a sec­ondary school, or even ob­ject to the pur­ple uni­form. Nor did then-Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­sid­er it in­ap­pro­pri­ate to give him the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) in 2011.

I my­self think let­ting some­one like him make chil­dren wear pur­ple trousers is equiv­a­lent to child abuse, and giv­ing him a na­tion­al award proves that com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice in­cludes writ­ing gush­ing ads in praise of the Prime Min­is­ter. But I am just a pee­wat writer, where­as Pas­tor Cuffie is an em­i­nent and wealthy cit­i­zen, and his care­less ap­proach to proof is not unique to him nor, in­deed, re­li­gious be­liev­ers.

For ex­am­ple, last year the Women's In­sti­tute for Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment and the in­fa­mous In­sti­tute of Gen­der Stud­ies and De­vel­op­ment con­duct­ed a sur­vey from which they con­clud­ed that T&T women, as a group, are be­ing abused by T&T men, as a group.

How did they prove this? By in­ter­view­ing abused women, or­gan­i­sa­tions which help abused women and ac­tivists who help abused women. This was their proof be­cause, ac­cord­ing to fem­i­nist the­o­ry, "truth is in­di­vid­ual or para­mount." In oth­er word, anec­dote trumps da­ta.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, the head of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion Lynette See­baran Suite al­leged­ly claimed that the av­er­age man in T&T earned US$30,000 a year where­as women earn half that.

Yet no­body in the au­di­ence chal­lenged this ob­vi­ous­ly ab­surd fig­ure, per­haps be­cause the peo­ple who go to such events are lit­er­ate but not nu­mer­ate. And even if the ac­tu­al fig­ure was in TT dol­lars, it would still be ir­rel­e­vant since women spend nine times as much as men, which is why 90 per cent of the stores in malls cater to them.

So this is why we should not be too hard on Pas­tor Cuffie, since the on­ly proof Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are re­al­ly con­cerned about is the pun­cheon they drink.

–Kevin Baldeosingh is a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els, and co-au­thor of a Caribbean his­to­ry text­book.