Clevon Raphael

Is the Gov­ern­ment play­ing hard­ball with the life of nine-year-old Han­nah Lendor? This is one of many ques­tions that can be le­git­i­mate­ly raised as the sor­ry saga of this child's fight for life con­tin­ues with the Gov­ern­ment–read Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning–hold­ing the trump card in this al­most trag­ic case.

Web­ster's Col­lege Dic­tio­nary has sev­er­al de­f­i­n­i­tions for hard­ball but in this in­stance I chose to use "tough or ruth­less." How else can one de­scribe this car­ing Gov­ern­ment's re­fusal, so far, to budge in the face of al­most uni­ver­sal crit­i­cisms for its re­fusal to fund this girl's life-sav­ing liv­er trans­plant? Sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions have ral­lied to the heart-rend­ing cause, all of which I will men­tion in time to come, but this lov­ing and car­ing Gov­ern­ment, led by Man­ning, has un­con­scionably re­fused to say if it would spend $1.3 mil­lion in what is clear­ly a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in the mak­ing. I am putting it square­ly at the feet of Man­ning since it would take on­ly his word to do the right thing and give this in­no­cent be­ing a chance to live a whole­some life. Sim­ply put, she will die if the op­er­a­tion is not per­formed and soon. Time is run­ning out with each pass­ing day.

One com­pa­ny has al­ready made arrange­ments with a Venezue­lan out­fit to have the pro­ce­dure per­formed there. Ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions, vol­un­tary groups and pri­vate cit­i­zens have do­nat­ed or are stag­ing fund-rais­ing ef­forts. In the face of this tru­ly civic-mind­ed dri­ve, Mr Man­ning's ad­min­is­tra­tion is say­ing ab­solute­ly noth­ing. The clock is re­lent­less­ly tick­ing away and with each sec­ond Han­nah's life is sure­ly be­ing placed in in­creas­ing jeop­ardy. Oh, how could I say Gov­ern­ment is say­ing or do­ing noth­ing? I for­got that one Wes­ley George, par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Health, ex­plained why the State can­not un­der­take to com­plete­ly fi­nance the op­er­a­tion. In­cred­i­bly, this man with a straight face told the na­tion in a ra­dio in­ter­view that if Gov­ern­ment should do so it would open the flood­gates for sim­i­lar ap­peals from needy cit­i­zens, or some dotish­ness like that.

Can you imag­ine such unadul­ter­at­ed crap? How come there was ab­solute­ly no fuss when the wife of Sports Min­ster Gary Hunt re­ceived more than $300,000 in tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to un­der­go a med­ical pro­ce­dure abroad? Is Mr Man­ning say­ing that tax­pay­ers' mon­ey should be se­lec­tive­ly used no mat­ter the mer­its of each case? Or is it a case, Mr Man­ning, of the same poor peo­ple who you beg for their suf­frage must die and the rich and con­nect­ed to the rul­ing par­ty, who are bet­ter placed to pay their way, will be giv­en first, sec­ond and last lien on pub­lic funds in these spe­cial cas­es? I re­al­ly don't care if you build an of­fi­cial PM's res­i­dence as large as the city of Port-of-Spain, the cit­i­zens wouldn't care if you spend $5 mil­lion on your Di­vine Echoes, we wouldn't mind if you spend $2 mil­lion on a bloody use­less flag, bil­lions more for your pri­vate con­cert hall and in oth­er nu­mer­ous ques­tion­able ar­eas. But at the same time you are try­ing to build a lega­cy of your stew­ard­ship you can­not ig­nore the plead­ings of the same poor and des­ti­tute peo­ple you claim to be the fa­ther of, as you fa­mous­ly did in a tele­vi­sion ad­dress to the na­tion some years ago.

In­stead of hav­ing hap­less cit­i­zens run­ning around the place beg­ging for do­na­tions to save Han­nah's life, why don't you sim­ply put aside a tidy sum by way of a spe­cial fund to take care of these needy cas­es? Let's say about $200 mil­lion? Is that ask­ing too much, Mr Man­ning? Sure­ly it can­not be the case of on­ly PNM peo­ple be­ing giv­en as­sis­tance and those of Han­nah's ilk can­not en­joy that safe­ty net in spite of an over­flow­ing Trea­sury. Doesn't it prick your con­science, Mr Prime Min­is­ter, that some­one who, in the eyes of the peo­ple, can af­ford to pay their way gets as­sis­tance from the pub­lic's purse? On the oth­er hand there is a lit­tle child, who did not chose to be sick, who comes from a de­pressed area, and whose moth­er is wag­ing a one-woman fight to save the life of her pre­cious daugh­ter.

With a save the chil­dren fund it wouldn't be a case of a des­per­ate­ly ill young­ster whose par­ents have to be a friend of some­one in the PNM or what­ev­er rul­ing par­ty be­fore help is giv­en. There would be a prop­er sys­tem where every­one would be en­ti­tled in a dig­ni­fied man­ner to ac­cess funds in an equal man­ner. Un­like the in­fa­mous fund which re­cent­ly hugged the na­tion­al lime­light, it won't be a "fren, fren" thing. This pro­posed sys­tem would re­spect the dig­ni­ty of the needy chil­dren as any tru­ly car­ing gov­ern­ment ought to. One of the peo­ple push­ing the Han­nah project, Mar­cia Henville, says that af­ter this she is done with sim­i­lar ap­peals. I agree with her; this is some­thing that the State must un­der­take as a mat­ter of course.

To leave Han­nah's life-threat­en­ing predica­ment up to the gen­eros­i­ty of cit­i­zens is a woe­ful demon­stra­tion of how an un­car­ing gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to cal­lous­ly dis­re­gard the life of a child whose on­ly sin is to fall sick. With this cur­rent heart­less stance, Mr Man­ning, is it any won­der you did so bad­ly in the re­cent Ryan Poll?

�2 To be con­tin­ued

Lat­est: Han­nah leaves for Ar­genti­na for surgery on Jan­u­ary 6; the bal­ance need­ed is $300,000.