?Yvonne Webb

A priest has said the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in Port-of-Spain over the week­end ne­glect­ed to ar­rive at a con­sen­sus on so­cial, moral and spir­i­tu­al grounds. Speak­ing at the bless­ing of the Cr�che at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church, San Fer­nan­do, as well as the in­au­gu­ra­tion of Ad­vent on Sun­day, Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh said Trinidad and To­ba­go was dan­ger­ous­ly pol­lut­ed with harm­ful emis­sions from pow­er hun­gry and over am­bi­tious lead­ers. He said there were "poi­so­nous po­lit­i­cal gas­es of self­ish­ness and self-pro­mo­tion, dead­ly as any car­bons, in the ri­val­ry and scram­ble for the throne of gov­er­nance."

Teelucks­ingh said be­cause of the Copen­hagen meet­ing this week cli­mate change over­shad­owed the just con­clud­ed CHOGM. He asked: "But what of the moral cli­mate in these Com­mon­wealth coun­tries? Is it chang­ing for the worse? Is it a con­cern too?" He said: "The moral en­vi­ron­ment in T&T is pol­lut­ed by poi­so­nous emis­sions of hate and spite and cru­el­ty and vi­o­lence and of ne­glect of the un­der­priv­i­leged. "School­boys, with weapons in their school­bags, are now killing each oth­er." Teelucks­ingh said just as the pol­lu­tion of the wa­ter and land loomed over our en­vi­ron­ment, so too the moral and so­cial pol­lu­tion threat­ened our peace, har­mo­ny and hap­pi­ness.

Play­ing on the word cli­mate to dri­ve home the mes­sage of fam­i­ly val­ues, Teelucks­ingh told the con­gre­ga­tion fam­i­ly lives have been poi­soned and pol­lut­ed by in­fi­deli­ty, in­dis­ci­pline and ir­re­spon­si­ble par­ent­ing. He ob­served the eco­nom­ic cli­mate on­ly ap­peared to be clean, but it was pol­lut­ed by harm­ful tox­ins of greed, self­ish­ness and ir­re­spon­si­ble spend­ing at the high­est lev­el, re­gard­less of grow­ing pover­ty. "There is mon­ey to fly the world's most cost­ly flag, a flag of val­ue you would not find any­where in the world, not even in the Krem­lin," he said in ref­er­ence to the $2 mil­lion na­tion­al flag at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um.

He said there was al­so mon­ey for float­ing ho­tels at a mo­ment's no­tice, cost over­runs of pub­lic projects and com­mis­sions of en­quiry search­ing for cor­rup­tion. "While lead­ers live it up," he said, "too many of our cit­i­zens are ne­glect­ed." Teelucks­ingh said every­thing could not be right with the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in the Com­mon­wealth when the Pres­i­dent of Gam­bia could is­sue pub­lic threats to hu­man rights groups.