Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?My lit­tle daugh­ter and I are en­gaged in a dis­cus­sion of le­gal rights ver­sus moral rights. It all start­ed when I was go­ing through her school­bag and found some­thing that shouldn't be there: sheer lip-gloss in a small purse I gave her some time ago.

"Why is this in your bag, La­dy?" I asked, hold­ing it aloft. "Why are you in my bag?" she coun­tered. "Be­cause that's my job," I said. "But it's my bag." "No, you're a mi­nor. All you own is mine. Why is this in your bag?" She ex­plained she had "ac­ci­den­tal­ly for­got­ten" it in her bag af­ter tak­ing the purse to her school bazaar. The lip-gloss came out of the bag but the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued. "That is my bag," she as­sert­ed. "No," I in­sist­ed. "It's mine. You are not legal­ly en­ti­tled to own prop­er­ty. As your par­ent and guardian I own every­thing you have. You've heard it said, 'What's mine is yours'? Well, in this case, what's yours is mine." She finds it im­pos­si­ble to be­lieve this is true. I ex­plain that though she had a moral right to any­thing she "owned"–such a bank ac­count in her name, her clothes, books, shoes, toys and so on–legal­ly, she was a mi­nor and not en­ti­tled to own prop­er­ty. The Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of the Rights of the Child, a doc­u­ment to which most coun­tries are sig­na­to­ry, out­lines a laun­dry list of rights to which chil­dren are en­ti­tled. A name, a na­tion­al­i­ty, de­cent hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, play and safe­ty are some of those rights. Nowhere on the list is the right to own prop­er­ty. Nor, in­deed, is the right to pri­va­cy.

How­ev­er, moral­ly, a child is en­ti­tled to both, with­in cer­tain perime­ters. Sim­i­lar­ly, her mon­ey is her own, whether I have giv­en it to her or some­one else has. She can spend it on what she likes, be­cause teach­ing chil­dren fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­gins with them learn­ing the val­ue of mon­ey, of­ten the hard way through them spend­ing it bad­ly. How­ev­er, should I need to use "her" mon­ey for some rea­son, I won't hes­i­tate to do it. The big pic­ture is that as the head of the house­hold should there come a time when I need to use that re­source, use it I will. In a court of law I dare­say I would win a case on those grounds. I am the guardian of not just her per­son but her fi­nances, and the use of those fi­nances for her wel­fare is jus­ti­fi­able. The ques­tion of le­gal rights ver­sus moral rights seems to be one ap­plic­a­ble to the wider so­ci­ety to­day. Take, for in­stance, the sto­ry pub­lished in the News­day Thurs­day gone. Min­is­ter of Sport Gary Hunt has ad­mit­ted his wife has lost her hear­ing. An­dre Ba­goo itemised Car­olyn Hunt's med­ical bills as fol­lows: Trip to Johns Hop­kins Hos­pi­tal, Bal­ti­more, De­cem­ber, 2008: $53,16.85. Trip to Johns Hop­kins Hos­pi­tal, Bal­ti­more, March, 2009: $42,758.28. Cochlear im­plant pro­ce­dure, Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, June, 2009: $228,150. To­tal: $324,069.13.

Ba­goo writes that Hunt would not con­firm or de­ny the Gov­ern­ment paid her med­ical ex­pens­es. "Ac­cord­ing to the Eighty-Ninth Re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC), a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is en­ti­tled to med­ical care once it oc­curs with­in T&T. The SRC notes that min­is­ters have an en­ti­tle­ment to med­ical at­ten­tion or treat­ment and pre­scribed drugs for them­selves, spous­es and chil­dren at any health­care fa­cil­i­ty un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex." I do not be­grudge the min­is­ter the med­ical in­sur­ance to which he is en­ti­tled as a sit­ting mem­ber of Gov­ern­ment, and al­low that this should be ex­tend­ed to his fam­i­ly as well. He has a clear le­gal right to it, as Ba­goo out­lined above. Whether he has a moral right to it is an­oth­er ques­tion. Gary Hunt came to Gov­ern­ment as a man of means. A suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, he was En­tre­pre­neur of the Year in 1998. The com­pa­ny he found­ed, Rad­i­cal De­signs, is a suc­cess­ful chain of cloth­ing and ac­ces­sories stores found in malls across the coun­try. An In­ter­net lookup of Rad­i­cal De­signs re­veals, "In ad­di­tion to its six out­lets on...Trinidad, Rad­i­cal has re­gion­al branch­es fur­ther up the is­lands in An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, Tor­to­la and St Maar­teen." Sure­ly he is not with­out the where­with­al to fund his fam­i­ly's med­ical ex­pens­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they do not fall with­in the let­ter of the law. Johns Hop­kins doc­tors, Ba­goo re­port­ed, were flown in for the surgery be­cause it is not or­di­nar­i­ly avail­able in T&T. Mrs Hunt's vis­its to Johns Hop­kins, to the tune of near­ly $100,000, do not con­sti­tute "any health­care fa­cil­i­ty un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties."

Serv­ing the coun­try at the high­est lev­el is a de­mand­ing job. I be­lieve pay­ing our serv­ing poli­ti- cians prop­er salaries and al­low-an­ces is one way to pre­vent cor­rup­tion, or at least re­duces the ex­cus­es for the ac­cep­tance of bribes. I do not ask politi­cians to be like Jack Warn­er and es­chew a salary al­to­geth­er. How­ev­er, just be­cause one has a le­gal right to the perk of such med­ical in­sur­ance doesn't mean one, par­tic­u­lar­ly a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man, has the moral right to it. Our politi­cians have a habit of spend­ing our mon­ey on per­son­al med­ical ex­pens­es, to wit, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, for­mer Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, who bore twin girls af­ter vis­it­ing an in vit­ro fer­til­i­sa­tion clin­ic, paid for with State funds; and the Prime Min­is­ter him­self, who elect­ed to go to Cu­ba for dif­fer­ent surg­eries avail­able in T&T. This lib­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion of their le­gal right to spend this mon­ey in these ways makes me very un­com­fort­able. Is it that they, as I, feel that as guardians they have the moral right to spend their "chil­dren's" mon­ey as they see fit? And are we, the pub­lic, whose mon­ey they have spent, re­al­ly chil­dren with no le­gal right to in­ter­vene?