Clevon Raphael

Con­vinced that some un­god­ly force is at­tempt­ing to steal the soul of the na­tion Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Ari­ma MP, Rodger Samuel, is em­bark­ing on a one-week fast to save T&T. The fast starts from to­mor­row.Samuel, al­so a pas­tor, dis­closed that he re­signed from the Con­gress of the Peo­ple last year. He ad­mit­ted that he and the May­or of Ari­ma do not see eye to eye and that this has been af­fect­ing some projects in the bor­ough.

Speak­ing about his con­ver­sa­tion with the Lord on his fu­ture in the pol­i­tics, Min­is­ter Samuel said it was an on­go­ing process and the Lord will guide him ac­cord­ing­ly.

Q: Mr Min­is­ter, I be­lieve you and I are go­ing to fall out this morn­ing you know...

A: Why? (A cu­ri­ous ex­pres­sion in his Sixth Floor of­fice in the Nicholas Tow­er, Port-of-Spain, Thurs­day morn­ing).

Be­cause you told me that I wouldn't be able to ask any­thing about the pol­i­tics in the coun­try at this time. Aren't you an in­te­gral part of the pol­i­tics?

Well yes I am but not for sen­sa­tion­al­ism. I came to re­al­ly serve and to make a dif­fer­ence with who I am and with my life.

You seem to shun the spot­light, but I am warn­ing you, I can­not promise I will not ask you the po­lit­i­cal ques­tions. In this day and age when im­age is im­por­tant, don't you think it is im­por­tant to have your PR peo­ple work­ing as the rest of your Cab­i­net col­leagues are do­ing?

Ok. But we shall see as we go along.

Mr Samuel, how do you rec­on­cile the fact that you are both a politi­cian and a man of the cloth...isn't that a bit out of the or­di­nary scheme of things?

I dis­agree. When you look at the bible David was a King, Joseph was a prophet and so on, and peo­ple who be­lieve in the high­er au­thor­i­ty of the Almighty God should not be afraid to be­come lead­ers of na­tions.

Very well. Mr Min­is­ter, this morn­ing three talk show hosts Richard Ra­goo­bars­ingh, Dr Mor­gan Job and Wen­dell Stephens...

(In­ter­rupt­ing) Pow­er 102...

Yes. They were lit­er­al­ly wip­ing the floor with your name, ac­cus­ing you of be­ing just like your pre­de­ces­sors who served as MPs for Ari­ma and who they claimed did noth­ing for Ari­ma.

(Slight­ly in­dig­nant) Un­for­tu­nate­ly they nev­er called me, and you know to reach me these days is a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion be­cause...

I had been try­ing to reach you the whole day yes­ter­day un­suc­cess­ful­ly. Were you in hid­ing?

I am not...I am at work. My thing is that I am a dis­ci­plined per­son, a re­spon­si­ble per­son, so I do not say things for say­ing things sake. When you left one of your voice mail mes­sages I said okay, if he calls again I will an­swer and you did call. I heard the sin­cer­i­ty in your voice, and I said "let me speak with him."

Thanks for the com­mer­cial (laughs).

Get­ting back to your Pow­er 102 fans (half smiles). Do you share their view on you be­ing just like your pre­de­ces­sors?

I don't agree with that, and I re­al­ly do not like to blow my own trum­pet, but I have ten pages of (tak­ing out the doc­u­ments from a file on his desk) ma­jor stuff which has been done un­der my watch in Ari­ma, which in­clude re­build­ing the Mt Pleas­ant bridge which was im­pass­able for 28 years, and we are re­con­struct­ing the Blan­chisseuse Road.

I al­so promised to build a new Ari­ma po­lice sta­tion and this will be com­plet­ed by year end. We are about to have an en­tire­ly new hos­pi­tal on a gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment con­tract with Chi­na. We are now es­tab­lish­ing the type of hos­pi­tal to be built and com­plet­ed by March 2017.

So why these talk shows are crit­i­cis­ing the MP?

I am not too sure that these peo­ple have been to Ari­ma. And re­mem­ber, I am in Gov­ern­ment on­ly three years now.

Very well, Mr Samuel, are you dis­ap­point­ed to­day that you agreed to of­fer your­self for pub­lic of­fice in 2010?

No way. There has nev­er been a dis­ap­point­ment.

I got that im­pres­sion af­ter read­ing a news­pa­per in­ter­view you did ear­li­er this week...

I do not know where they get that from...I am not dis­en­chant­ed.

Dis­ap­point­ed?

I am not dis­ap­point­ed.

Dis­gust­ed?

I am not dis­gust­ed.

Hap­py?

(Lean­ing for­ward on his chair and paus­ing briefly) I am....I have been ex­cit­ed about serv­ing peo­ple. Some­times things are not hap­pen­ing as fast as you ex­pect­ed them to hap­pen, but I per­sist and pur­sue re­gard­less of what.

I take it you are sat­is­fied with your stew­ard­ship thus far?

(Con­fi­dent­ly) 100 per cent. Not that I feel I can­not do bet­ter, but I am sat­is­fied so far and I nor­mal­ly push my­self.

Mr Samuel, you know we jour­nal­ists (an an­tic­i­pa­to­ry chuck­le) re­ceive in­for­ma­tion as part of our re­mit, and I was told that you and the Ari­ma May­or do not see eye to on some ma­jor de­vel­op­ment projects in the bor­ough.

That may be 100 per cent cor­rect and in some ways it has stymied progress of these projects...in some ways it has. When I cam­paigned in Ari­ma in 2007 and 2010, I did so with a vi­sion; where I can take Ari­ma from where it is now. Ari­ma hon­est­ly had been aban­doned for years, but when I took of­fice the may­or did not re­al­ly see or em­brace the vi­sion that I had when I cam­paigned, al­though I shared it with him.

Isn't there any way yours and his views can gel to ben­e­fit the con­stituents?

(Puz­zling ex­pres­sion) I have no idea what his vi­sion is to be hon­est with you. It has nev­er been ar­tic­u­lat­ed. So I have of­ten asked "What are your plans and vi­sion?" But re­al­ly, it has not been clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed and as a re­sult there have been dif­fi­cul­ties.

I was al­so told that's the rea­son for your dis­ap­point­ment be­ing in Gov­ern­ment, which you have de­nied...

Nah...Nah...that is not true.

And that you sub­mit­ted your res­ig­na­tion some months ago?

(A four-sec­ond pause with a somber ex­pres­sion) In...I will be hon­est with you. Last year, be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ties with the op­er­a­tions of the bor­ough, I ten­dered my res­ig­na­tion to the COP. We had tremen­dous con­ver­sa­tions sub­se­quent to that and I agreed to stay with­in the par­ty. So I con­tin­ued to work and sup­port the Con­gress of the Peo­ple be­cause I be­lieve in the phi­los­o­phy of the par­ty.

Why did you send in your res­ig­na­tion?

Be­cause I felt that at the time it was nec­es­sary for the par­ty to se­ri­ous­ly look in­to the prob­lems that we were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, and I felt al­so that in­suf­fi­cient was be­ing done to al­le­vi­ate the is­sues. And, Clevon, I am not a per­son to cause con­fronta­tion so I would say "Okay, prob­a­bly you can func­tion bet­ter with­out me."

Did you take your con­cerns to the Prime Min­is­ter?

Yes. I will take the time to speak with her and share with her how I feel, and be­cause I re­spect her that's why I have said noth­ing to the me­dia be­cause we need to re­spect peo­ple. She is my im­me­di­ate boss.She is cam­paign­ing and I will wait un­til it is all over so to­geth­er we can sit one to one. Maybe she would have some words for me like­wise.

Ok, ready for the big ques­tion?

Is it po­lit­i­cal?

You will tell me if it is po­lit­i­cal, right?

(Again, lean­ing for­ward in ea­ger an­tic­i­pa­tion and bursts out laugh­ing) You are so good...you are so good...

Mr Samuel, have you com­plet­ed your con­ver­sa­tion with the Good Lord on your po­lit­i­cal fu­ture?

It is an on­go­ing process. Clevon, I am not a mi­crowave-styled Chris­t­ian where I feel I talk to God and zap it hap­pens! God has guid­ed me thus far to be where I am.

Do you feel, Min­is­ter, that God will guide your path away from pol­i­tics?

(Plead­ing with out­stretched hands) I don't know... don't know. I am not God. I am sub­ject to him, and the Bible says the steps of the right­eous are guid­ed by God.

Mr Samuel, are you con­cerned with the stan­dard of the con­ver­sa­tion em­a­nat­ing from the main camps in the run up to the Ju­ly 29 by-elec­tion for the Ch­agua­nas West seat?

(Bend­ing for­ward and rest­ing on his desk) Yes, and that's why I am pray­ing.

I un­der­stand you are fast­ing, too?

Yes. I am fast­ing. I have em­barked on a fast...

But here you are at your desk hard at work?

That's al­right. Je­sus said when you fast do not go about the place look­ing droopy and stuff like that...go and wash your face and look al­right. I have been giv­en leave but my full fast will start on Mon­day, and I will have on­ly wa­ter for sev­en days.

Ex­act­ly why are you fast­ing?

For the soul of the na­tion. I be­lieve there is some force that is at­tempt­ing to steal the soul of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I need to be­seech God to save the soul of the na­tion. Too much is hap­pen­ing and too much has hap­pened over the years...bad we have left it un­done. We need a right­eous res­o­lu­tion that we can get back fear­ing God and that we have to an­swer to the Cre­ator at the end of the day.