Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has urged cit­i­zens to re­spect women, chil­dren and the el­der­ly. He made the call as he de­liv­ered his Di­vali mes­sage at Debe Junc­tion on Tues­day night.

Ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing at the event, ti­tled “Raat Ke Shak­ti, a Night of En­er­gy,” Mooni­lal em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of up­hold­ing val­ues and cul­tur­al prac­tices, stress­ing that “vul­gar­i­ty is not part of our dhar­ma.”

As he spoke about the essence of Hin­du Dhar­ma, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal again called on the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close the le­gal fees spent by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­B­DC) af­ter a re­cent Privy Coun­cil rul­ing dis­missed fraud al­le­ga­tions made by the EM­B­DC against a lo­cal con­trac­tor.

The Oc­to­ber 29 Privy Coun­cil rul­ing up­held a 2020 Trinidad and To­ba­go Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion that grant­ed Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors a sum­ma­ry judg­ment for un­paid work cer­tifi­cates re­lat­ed to in­fra­struc­ture projects com­plet­ed in 2015.

As Hous­ing Min­is­ter at the time, Mooni­lal de­fend­ed the project’s le­gal­i­ty and not­ed that “de­ci­sions were prop­er­ly and legal­ly tak­en with in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions.”

Ad­dress­ing the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions of the case, Mooni­lal urged the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count for the funds used in the EM­B­DC’s le­gal cam­paign.

“The mil­lions wast­ed on this mat­ter could have been bet­ter used to pro­vide food cards for those who are hun­gry, med­i­cines in hos­pi­tals, and sup­port for small busi­ness­es,” Mooni­lal said.

He crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed le­gal bat­tle, as he did when the rul­ing was hand­ed down on Tues­day.

“Tonight, I call up­on the EM­B­DC to dis­close the mil­lions spent in fees. This case has been de­stroyed be­cause they could not bring proof for the ne­far­i­ous al­le­ga­tions they made.”

Fo­cus­ing on the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion, Mooni­lal spoke about the spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance of the Ra­mayan, point­ing to the lessons of dhar­ma, or moral du­ty, in the sto­ry of Lord Ram, Si­ta, and Lak­sh­man’s re­turn to Ay­o­d­hya af­ter 14 years of ex­ile.

He en­cour­aged all to em­brace prin­ci­ples of du­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, and peace, stress­ing that gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions should al­so up­hold these val­ues.

“We in­voke the spir­it of Ra­ma and his ad­her­ence to dhar­ma,” Mooni­lal said. “For any coun­try to live in peace, we must be guid­ed by dhar­ma.”

The evening saw a blend of cul­tur­al per­for­mances from stu­dents of Debe Hin­du School among oth­ers, as well as spir­i­tu­al bless­ings from spe­cial guests, in­clud­ing Swa­mi Brah Aswaru­panan­da, Spir­i­tu­al Head of the Brah­ma Vidya Peetham In­ter­na­tion­al; Sri Jayan­thi Ku­maraswam, Spir­i­tu­al Leader and pres­i­dent of the Jai Sathya Mis­sion of T&T, Africa, and In­dia; as­trologer Sri Mu­ru­gan Prakash Rao and Sad­hvi A Nan­damaiy­ee Giri, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Brah­ma Vidya Peetham In­ter­na­tion­al.