This is an open let­ter to God. It is a prayer for di­vine in­ter­ven­tion to help the Gov­ern­ment re­alise and de­sist from its dog­mat­ic com­pul­sion of wast­ing mon­ey on non-es­sen­tials and turn­ing a blind eye to is­sues that re­al­ly mat­ter. The lat­est squan­der­ing para-digm is Sports Min­is­ter Gary Hunt's na­tion­al flag ini­tia­tive at a cost of $2 mil­lion. That out­ra­geous ex­pen­di­ture was seem­ing­ly au­tho­rised for the erec­tion of a 130-foot flag which the good­ly min­is­ter es­pous­es to be a great sym­bol of na­tion­al pride and for which no cost is too great. Lord, we pray that the Gov­ern­ment soon un­der­stands that na­tion­al pride is not and can­not be de­rived from the mere sight of a huge na­tion­al flag that may be seen from miles around.

Je­sus, show them that fos­ter­ing a proud and hap­py na­tion comes through con­sis­tent pro­vi­sion of the more ba­sic com­modi­ties like an un­in­ter­rupt­ed wa­ter sup­ply, af­ford­able food and hous­ing, ad­e­quate health­care, a sense of se­cu­ri­ty, re­li­able trans­porta­tion, a func­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, suf­fi­cient jobs and roads, sus­tained elec­tric­i­ty and prop­er drainage, to name a few. Teach them, Lord, that na­tion­al pride runs deep and is aligned with how one feels about his/her coun­try. Though there is much to be proud of in T&T there are too many neg­a­tives that sti­fle pro-gress. Fa­ther, in help­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to fur­ther un­der­stand what con­sti­tutes na­tion­al pride, please give them the wis­dom to see what does not. Let them un­der­stand why the fol­low­ing trans­gres­sions are con­trary to na­tion build­ing and na­tion­al pride.

Re­cent­ly, MP Kei­th Row­ley raised ques­tions in Par­lia­ment rel­a­tive to his con­cerns and per­cep­tions of cor­rup­tion with­in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. Chief of which was the ten­der­ing for the new Acad­e­my of Arts build­ing in Port-of-Spain. PM Man­ning's re­sponse two days lat­er, in­stead of ad­dress­ing the con­cerns raised, at­tacked Row­ley's char­ac­ter in an at­tempt to dis­cred­it him. That move was a bla­tant side-step­ping of the re­al is­sues and the pop­u­lace was not fooled. Lord, help our lead­ers to re­alise such ac­tions are averse to na­tion­al pride. In April, a sum­mit was held in T&T that cost the coun­try some­where be­tween $500 mil­lion and $1 bil­lion. The stage is lit­er­al­ly be­ing set to host yet an­oth­er con­fer­ence to­wards the end of this month with sim­i­lar costs as the first.

And all the while the Gov­ern­ment is mind­ful of the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Does T&T re­al­ly need to host two of these meet­ings at such a time? Can the coun­try af­ford it? More­over, prop­er­ty own­ers are be­ing forced to pay 30 times their cur­rent tax­es be­gin­ning 2010. So some per­cep­tions tell that the cit­i­zens are pay­ing for un­nec­es­sary ex­trav­a­gan­zas. We pray that the ones in pow­er see that no pride can come from this. Je­sus, many times in the past, for­mer fran­chise hold­er for the Miss T&T con­tests for Miss Uni­verse and Miss World, Pe­ter Elias, be­seeched the Cul­ture Min­istry for funds to pre­pare lo­cal con­tes­tants to en­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al con­tests.

He be­came fed up of hav­ing to use his own mon­ey, as funds came too late or not at all from the Gov­ern­ment. Oh God, help the re­spec­tive min­is­ter to know that na­tion­al pride comes when all of T&T sees our young women hold­ing the spot­light on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage with 1.5 mil­lion view­ers world­wide. Most of all, Lord, we ask that the rel­e­vant se­lec­tors and se­lec­tive process pro­vide a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er that will make the dif­fer­ence in crime sta­tis­tics that we, the peo­ple, so des­per­ate­ly need and de­serve. In short, dear God, we are re­al­ly beg­ging for tru­ly car­ing gov­er­nance, which by ex­ten­sion will nur­ture na­tion­al pride.