God is really not a Trini

THE EDITOR: The Trinity Cross, TT’s perennial thorn of contention, is in the news once again. There are people in the country who will have us believe that a mundane matter as the national Award, Trinity Cross, if allowed to continue as is can increase the country’s ethnic polarisation, as if that is possible. We are all well aware that our ethnic polarisation has already reached  a crisis situation. The Prime Minister, Patrick Manning by his utterances is lending legitimacy to the demands of the IRO’s demand that the National Trinity Cross award name be changed to one more acceptable to the non-Christian population. Sat Maharaj, the Secretary General of the (SDMS), is back on his high horse calling on all members of the public to refuse to submit nominations for the national Awards for August 2003. The matter has now become a political football. I have no quarrel with Sat Maharaj’s latent awareness of the religious implications that are synonymous with the “Cross”, in the Nation’s National Award Trinity Cross. My only contention is that it took Sat Maharaj all this time to come out against the Trinity Cross. Why does he not extend the same gestation period to the Government in order for it to address the matter. He is demanding that the matter be dealt with right away — “like yesterday”. Suffice it to say, Basdeo Panday who acted in the position of Prime Minister for over six years and also happens to be of the Hindu faith (which by the way happens to be a faith not a religion) never addressed the issue.

TT may be multi ethnic and multi religious but like Don Quixote we are all fighting windmills; but unfortunately for Sat Maharaj he has the largest windmill of all. This matter could be handled amicably without this rancour. How about this as a solution: to satisfy the IRO and Sat Maharaj, allow Indians of the Muslim persuasion and Indians of the Hindu faith to choose a name for the Top National Award that is acceptable to both sides. All faiths or religions with problems regarding the “Cross”, should be afforded the privilege to receive any national honour with a name of their choice. But they should not be given the leeway to come back sometime later and say: we had been comfortable with this name in the past, but we no longer find it acceptable. The Government should not be placed on a thread-mill at the disposal of all and sundry in the society. How does a spurious demand by Sat Maharaj, become so embroiled in all this acrimonious cross talk with such far reaching, serious implications. We continue to abuse our God-given freedoms — the free press, religion, our high tolerance for each others’ foibles and whims and fancies and, above all, our unquestionable freedom of speech. At this rate, all this could steer the country into anarchy. We should be mindful of what we have and should do our utmost to make it work for us. The fallacy that God is a Trini should not be taken literally because He is not. He is also Haitian, Jamaican, Chinese, American and Indian. By now everyone has gotten the picture: God is infinite. So it would be foolhardy for us to push our luck. The Government should pay more attention to the people who are working towards getting all the people together and ignore those who are about driving a wedge between our already fragile unity by adding fire to our daily conflicts. We should all count our blessings and desist from airing our complaints with hidden agendas. We should fix our eyes on the doughnut, not on the hole in the doughnut.

ULRIC GUY
Point Fortin