Manning’s “Poisoned Chalice”

BRIDGETOWN — A leading social commentator and columnist of Barbados, Oliver Jackman, is urging Prime Minister Patrick Manning to go along with the offer from former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday for a power-sharing arrangement pending new general election.

Having, through “constitutional happenstance, got the poisoned chalice of the prime ministership”, argues Jackman, “Mr Manning should realise that henceforward he can only take what he can get…

“And what he will clearly not get”, added Jackman, who is also a Judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, “without a measure of accommodation to the reality of the numbers (18 seats each), and thus to Mr Panday’s proposals, is a parliament. And without a parliament he is not merely a lame duck: he is a dead duck”.

In his weekly column in yesterday’s Sunday Sun the former diplomat and journalist, writing under the title of “Manning’s Poisoned Chalice” on the current post-election governance impasse, said:

“As long as 40 per cent of the population feels that the business of managing the country can be entrusted only to ‘Indics’, and another 40 per cent plump for ‘Africs’ (using the formulation of former UWI professor Richard Allsopp), then 18-18 is likely to be the outcome of any election in the foreseeable future — always allowing for the temporary rental of one or two of the more inaurably venial”.

Against this background, Jackman thinks that Panday’s proposal for “a straight-down-the-middle scheme of power-sharing is neither illogical nor unreasonable”. And the claim by Manning that such a scheme would be “unworkable, is mere rhetoric”.

Jackman asked how does Manning know that it would be ‘unworkable’ when he has never tried it. The Panday scheme, he said, may be “unthinkable” to one nurtured on the “zero-sum political culture of the ‘Westminster model’, where the winner takes all.”

But as the columnist and judge sees it, while Panday’s idea of power-sharing may be “innovative, daring, difficult and even slightly bizarre”, it looks “like the only game in town”.

Manning and Panday are scheduled to meet for another round of talks, their sixth, at the Trinidad Hilton on Wednesday, to seek ways of resolving the current impasse that arose from their respective party gaining 18 seats each at the December 10 general elections for the 36-member House of Representatives.

Rebuke for RC priest on use of condoms

PORT-OF-SPAIN — A Roman Catholic priest of Trinidad and Tobago has ran into a public rebuke from the country’s Archbishop, Edward Gilbert, for his recent advice to a group of high school students to use condomns if they feel that they had to engage in sex.

The priest, Fr Rudy Mohammed, had claimed that he had been taken out of context in media reports.

But American-born Archbishop Gilbert — who assumed that office last year amid some controversy that the office should have been filled by a Trinidadian or West Indian national, following the death of Archbisop Anthony Pantin — said that for the RC Church to advocate “safe sex with condemns” was to engage in a “false theology”.

Some sections of the media and local commentators had initially commended Fr Mohammed’s view as being consistent with the general advocacy for the practicising of safe sex as part of the campaign to avoid being infected with the HIV/AIDS disease.

Archbishop Gilbert, however, said that after careful consideration of the actual text of Fr Mohammed’s statement on safe sex and condoms use, he called in the priest for a discussion and informed him that he would have to depart from what the media would normally describe as “the Archbishop’s usual reticence” and make a formal public response on the matter.

He said that he felt obliged to do so after receiving numerous telephone calls from sections of the media, parents, teachers in Catholic schools and catechists.

Speaking as head of the Roman Catholic Church in a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society where those of the Roman Catholic faith constitute the single largest Christian community, the Archbishop said there was “no change in the teaching of the Church and on sexuality and sexual activity…

“The norm is absolute abstention from prohibited sexual activity prior to marriage, absolute fidelity to one’s partner in marriage and absolute commitment to marital chastity during marriage. The teachings of the Catholic Church offers people unqualified protection from the pandemic of AIDS”, he said.

12 year-girl released in ‘obeah’ murder case

GEORGETOWN — A 12 year-old girl who was held for questioning in connection with the suspected murder of a 32 year-old woman last week in a case involving “spiritism” or, what is known in Guyana as “obeah practice”, has been released.

But the police are continuing their probe into the death of Camille Seenauth with the detention of a 45 year-old self-styled “spiritual healer”, Pamela Alves, who has a reputation, according to the police, of beating people while administering “healing” treatment.

The body of Seenauth was found on Friday in a shallow grave aback of where she lived in Central Greorgetown next to Alves who is reported to have been “treating” her following an accident.

The 12 year-old girl of a community high school, was left in the custody of Alves by her destitute mother last year. She has been questioned by the police about her daughter’s physical condition in the care of Alves.

The mother has been seeking to get the girl taken care of by the welfare services, explaining that since she cannot care for her personally her relatives were reluctant to take the child into their homes because they were fearful she would in turn “take something evil” into their homes as a result of her association with Alves.