Hazel’s conflicting roles

HAZEL MANNING wife of Prime Minister Patrick Manning, is accompanying her husband on his trip to New York where he will address the 59th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday. Ordinarily, we would have no comment to make on such an announcement, since the PM has the right to have his wife at his side while performing any official function as the leader of the TT government. A problem arises, however, from the fact that Mrs Manning is also the Minister of Education, responsible for a vital portfolio that is fraught with difficulties and, on the eve of her departure, we have not been told who will be acting in her place during the week she is expected to be away with her husband.

This situation illustrates the reason why we felt Mrs Manning’s appointment to the Cabinet, particularly to such a crucial and onerous Ministry, was a basic mistake. As the wife of the Prime Minister, Mrs Manning already has an important role to play, specific responsibilities to fulfil, not the least of which should be the proper administration of the PM’s household and domestic affairs. To burdern her, in addition, with the duties of a trouble-laden front-line Ministry, responsible for running an education system in transition, was simply asking too much from her. As we now see with the PM’s recent visit to Cuba for essential medical treatment and his current trip to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly, Mrs Manning’s dual role as wife and Minister is subject to  the kind of conflict in which the people’s business is likely to suffer.

Mrs Manning will be away from the Education Ministry at a difficult time when there are still problems with the placement of SEA students in secondary schools, not to mention the myriad on-going difficulties with discipline, security, curriculum reform, relevance, suitability and availability of textbooks, displaced schools, etc. For example, should not Mrs Manning be personally concerned and taking an active interest in the apparent injustice being inflicted on 12-year-old Kalifa Logan whose education is being disrupted and short-changed because she wears the dreadlocks hairstyle in keeping with her Rastafarian beliefs? We understand that Kalifa had passed the SEA examinations for a five-year school, and was happy to learn that she was being placed at St Charles High School.

However, she was refused entry at St Charles by principal Sr Adrianna Noel who claimed that the student’s “dreadlocks” would violate the uniform code and present a “disciplinary problem” at the private Catholic school. The school’s refusal to compromise in any way over this issue seems unduly reactionary in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious society such as ours and, in fact, amounts to an unfortunate prejudgment of a 12-year-old child with an unblemished record of conduct at the primary level. But what seems even more unfair is the Education Ministry’s reaction to this deadlock; failing St Charles, it has now decided to place Kalifa at Five Rivers Junior Secondary, a three-year school, thus imposing a “solution” which appears both unjust and discriminatory. We are told that the switch was made unilaterally, without consulting Kalifa’s parents.

Officers at Mrs Manning’s Ministry say that this issue is being blown entirely out of proportion. In our view, however, this conflict goes to the heart of some of the critical principles on which our society is structured: Can the rules of an organisation simply override the rights of a citizen to observe the practices of her religion or demonstrate her religious beliefs? Can a Hindu or Muslim school deny entry to a child who wears a cross around his or her neck? Is the threat to discipline so severe as to deny them that right or even the chance of working out of a compromise in the interest of promoting our harmonious plurality? Gentle and lady-like, Mrs Manning has the highest respect as the PM’s wife. But should not the Education Ministry be administered by a stronger person?