Yvonne Ba­boolal

Take God out of the Con­sti­tu­tion.This was the pro­pos­al of athe­ist and found­ing mem­ber of the T&T Hu­man­ist As­so­ci­a­tion Kevin Baldeosingh at the first con­sul­ta­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, on Mon­day.This caused con­ster­na­tion among some mem­bers of the pub­lic present, in­clud­ing Os­wald Pierre, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Caribbean Re­li­gious Lib­er­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (CAR­LA).

Ad­dress­ing com­mis­sion­ers at the head ta­ble, in­clud­ing Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har, and in the hear­ing of a full hall, Baldeosingh said he had a prob­lem with the word­ing of the pre­am­ble to the Con­sti­tu­tion which ac­knowl­edged the su­prema­cy of God.

He read out the part which said "the na­tion of T&T is found­ed up­on prin­ci­ples that ac­knowl­edge the su­prema­cy of God, faith in fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights and free­doms, the po­si­tion of the fam­i­ly in a so­ci­ety of free men and free in­sti­tu­tions, the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son and the equal and in­alien­able rights with which all mem­bers of the hu­man fam­i­ly are en­dowed by their Cre­ator".That ap­peared to make those who did not be­lieve in God not part of the na­tion, Baldeosingh, a jour­nal­ist, told the com­mis­sion­ers.

Fur­ther, the part about the "in­alien­able rights en­dowed by the Cre­ator" may al­so have im­pli­ca­tions for non-be­liev­ers, he said.Baldeosingh told the com­mis­sion­ers that in a re­cent sur­vey, 146,000 peo­ple in T&T did not state their re­li­gious be­liefs."There is quite a large num­ber of peo­ple not con­sid­ered in the Con­sti­tu­tion," he not­ed.

Asked by mod­er­a­tor Er­rol Fa­bi­en to sug­gest how the pre­am­ble should be word­ed then, Baldeosingh said: "Leave out the God thing. Or any ref­er­ence to God. The orig­i­nal draft (of the Con­sti­tu­tion) did not have any ref­er­ence to God."Pierre, one of the ear­li­est par­tic­i­pants to take the floor, seemed qui­et­ly shocked."If you take God out of this, you will have to take Him out of the na­tion­al an­them. You see how it's all be­ing slow­ly erod­ed," he said soft­ly.

The last line of the na­tion­al an­them says: "May God bless our na­tion."Mem­bers of the Hu­man­ist As­so­ci­a­tion in­clude for­mer UWI lec­tur­er De­nis Solomon, T&T Guardian colum­nist BC Pires and Dr Ge­of­frey Frank­son. Pires, who said he was an ag­nos­tic, said most hu­man­ists around the world did not be­lieve in God.Asked if most mem­bers of the lo­cal as­so­ci­a­tion did not be­lieve in God, Baldeosingh said a bet­ter de­scrip­tion of their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty or lack there­of would be "non-re­li­gious."

Pierre, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion at the con­sul­ta­tion, said in the Unit­ed States there was a push against re­li­gious free­dom in the Supreme Court. He said he want­ed to see re­li­gious lib­er­ty, which is en­shrined in T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion, con­tin­ue.David Taitt, an­oth­er floor mem­ber, told the com­mis­sion­ers the Con­sti­tu­tion must not le­galise ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and must iden­ti­fy mar­riage as be­tween a man and a woman.

"We are a coun­try that fol­lows God's rule. No way we must have that nas­ti­ness here!" he shout­ed.