Pres­i­dent of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) Dr El­lis Bur­ris is urg­ing elec­tion can­di­dates to keep po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties away from re­li­gious ob­ser­vances.

He made the ap­peal fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent where the PNM’s Ca­roni Cen­tral can­di­date Adam Ho­sein at­tend­ed a Good Fri­day pro­ces­sion host­ed by the Parish of St Phillip and St James in Ch­agua­nas.

In a post on the parish’s of­fi­cial Face­book page, it was re­port­ed that Ho­sein at­tend­ed the event with a video­g­ra­ph­er who record­ed his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the event and in­clud­ed the footage in a video as part of his cam­paign.

This was done with­out the ap­proval of parish priest Fr Steve Ran­some and the church de­mand­ed an apol­o­gy and re­moval of the video.

Ho­sein wrote a let­ter of apol­o­gy stat­ing that it was not his in­ten­tion to politi­cise the oc­ca­sion or im­ply any con­nec­tion be­tween the church and the PNM.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Dr Bur­ris said po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing should be kept sep­a­rate from re­li­gious events and stressed the need for re­li­gious bod­ies to re­main apo­lit­i­cal.

He said he hoped politi­cians would learn from the in­ci­dent and re­spect the bound­aries of var­i­ous re­li­gious events dur­ing elec­tion cam­paign­ing/

“It doesn’t have a good fra­grance and I don’t think we will en­cour­age things of that na­ture,” he said.

“If you come to wor­ship God, you wor­ship God in wor­ship and in church. If you come to do oth­er things, you’re not com­ing to wor­ship God, you’re com­ing to cre­ate a scene.

“The IRO en­cour­ages wor­ship of God in spir­it and truth and there­fore such be­hav­iour is prob­a­bly out of line with re­li­gious keep­ing, so I just hope these things don’t re­oc­cur and we’re not try­ing to sep­a­rate re­li­gion from peo­ple, but we want re­li­gion to keep it’s ho­li­ness as it re­lates to God and teach­ings.”

Bur­ris added that re­li­gious bod­ies have strived to achieve some de­gree of uni­ty, so it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for politi­cians to use such a plat­form to in­cite di­vi­sion.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath agreed that it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for re­li­gious events to be used to fur­ther po­lit­i­cal agen­das, not­ing that many can­di­dates did not stage cam­paign ac­tiv­i­ties over the East­er week­end or dur­ing the Eid-ul-Fitr hol­i­day in March.

“It’s all to be ex­pect­ed that peo­ple would have ob­served the re­li­gious cal­en­dar re­gard­less of what­ev­er faith one be­longs to. He took ad­van­tage of a re­li­gious func­tion to use in cheap pol­i­tick­ing and that should not be the case.”

When asked if he felt that the in­ci­dent would hurt Ho­sein’s chances in the elec­tion, Ra­goonath de­clined to com­ment.

Dr Win­ford James said Ho­sein should not have used the event as a cam­paign tool but act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly by is­su­ing an apol­o­gy.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that there are no bound­aries be­tween re­li­gious ser­vices and cam­paign­ing and the con­tention seemed to arise from the na­ture of the event as a pri­vate ser­vice.

“There’s noth­ing spe­cial about re­li­gion in that re­gard, al­though some peo­ple are very sen­si­tive,” James said.

“But if I in­vit­ed you to some­thing, my pri­vate event, I’m not ex­pect­ing you to they just take pic­tures and do what you want.

“The main thing for me is pri­va­cy, I don’t know if any harm will be done to the pur­vey­ors of the re­li­gion, but they may not want to be as­so­ci­at­ed with a politi­cian who takes their con­tent and spreads it on Face­book.”