Echoing Pope Francis’ call for good politics in 2019, Archbishop of Port-of-Spain Jason Gordon is calling on local politicians to be advocates of peace.
Delivering his homily at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help RC Church, San Fernando, on Monday night, Gordon said the vocation of the politician was to be a source of unity for all of society and a seeker after the common good and not just the partisan good. He also appealed to citizens to consider non-violence in 2019, saying that it was the way to nurture a culture of peace.
But reflecting on life in T&T in 2018, Gordon said citizens have not been artisans of peace as there is inequity brewing in the treatment of refugees and prisoners. Gordon said that while many citizens were happy to live under the protection of the law, they were happy to turn a blind eye to injustices being meted out to prisoners who are at the Remand Yard Prison, simply because they cannot secure bail.
He said that of an estimated 2,000 people on remand, this was the case for approximately 1,000 prisoners, some of whom are innocent.
“We are happy not to notice that just over 1,000 of them in Remand Yard are there simply because they don’t have enough money to have a house that does not have a mortgage on it which is required for bail. Although the law permits people to put cash, that is not allowed in our country, which means that 1,000 people are in Remand Yard, simply because they don’t have the wherewithal to produce bail. And many of those people are not guilty.
“The other day a woman was released after spending six years in Remand Yard and she was innocent of the crime. She was there because she could not post bail. If that happened to you or me, we would do everything to want to change that. The law is there for every citizen in our society and it must protect every citizen and that is what the common good is about. When our system of law does not work to protect all of our citizens, we cannot be blind and think that is OK because we are culpable of the injustice in our society today,” Gordon said.
While the issue of refugee treatment continues to be a hot debate, Gordon said the reality was that they are here in T&T. He said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations 71 years ago and stressed that everyone in T&T had rights, regardless of their status.
However, he said that there are children who cannot go to school because T&T’s laws do not permit free education to refugee children.
“That cannot be right. If we’re going to be building peace in 2019, it can’t be peace for me and not for you. The only way we can build peace is when we build peace for the whole society and when we ensure the laws are protecting the peace of everyone in our society.”
Gordon said politicians have been called by the holy father to look at the way in which politics is taking place in society. He said the partisan nature of politics was often seen at the level of the village, the community, the city, and the nation.
He said everyone should go forth into 2019 as peacemakers, explaining that peace is not the absence of conflict but it's based on having the right relationships.
