Party before country

By Vernon Khelawan vkmoose@gmail.com

Well we really reach.

Now we have seen everything.

Nakedness, almost, in a church and a Cathedral at that. Scantily clad models parading in Church, using from the revered altar to the front door as a catwalk. Total disrespect for a sacred space.

This confirms that as a nation, we have lost our soul. We always knew that something has been eating away at our morals because as it stands now, this disrespect has hit many of our institutions, public offices, senior people, drivers on our roads and even each other, just simple everyday kindness.

It was wrong to even think that a sacred space could be used to hold a fashion show, even if it did not contain semi-nakedness. It was simply just wrong. No excuse can exonerate the organisers.

In this nine-day-wonder country of ours, we seem to have forgotten that a band launch was held at the All Saints Church in September by last year’s medium band champions K2K Alliance and Partners. This launch obviously set the precedent for ‘carnival in church’. Only this year it was taken a few steps further.

While last year’s show was not salacious in any way, it was probably the opening the fashion industry was seeking. And this seems to have been the story because a promoter said that the protests were made by ‘old people’. I suppose his parents are young people. We must forgive him. Just as I said total lack of respect.

So much has been said and written about the incident that all I would say is it was wrong from the very beginning to even think about having such a show in any sacred space be it temple, mosque, mandir or church. (See page 22)

Now to another national topic of premier importance. In the last few months, we have witnessed the deaths and abuse of many of our womenfolk, but the several women’s organisations operating in the country remain deafeningly silent on all these matters. They regularly hold seminars and conferences regarding the role of women in public service, business and I daresay even politics. Despite this, they continue to remain deathly silent about what is happening to women in our nation.

It is difficult to wrap your head around such behaviour. In many instances the various groups become very vocal about the rights of women—to be as equal as possible as men in similar positions in the workplace; seeking non-discrimination behaviour towards women in society, yet on the other hand become very silent when our women are victims of domestic violence, maltreatment, abused or even seriously wounded or even killed.

And finally, with elections in the air, I want to speak a little about our leaders, who unceremoniously absented themselves from the annual wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph in Port of Spain last weekend.

More than 75 parliamentarians, including the opposition leader, mayors and councilmen were no-shows at the function and reasons for their absence were not received.

I imagine they would say that they were all preparing for their party campaign launches later in the day. But I don’t buy that because a week before there was a big hullabaloo made to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in which Trinbagonians had no part to play.

But to commemorate our fallen soldiers, it did not matter. Where do our priorities lie? In Germany or at Port of Spain’s Memorial Park?

It certainly shows to me the quality of our leaders, who, if the party launches were the reason, are prepared to put party before country.