Kevin Baldeosingh

Last Sat­ur­day, Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Thomas Aquinas Car­mona an­nounced that he had asked God to cure can­cer.

The Pres­i­dent was speak­ing at a book launch for am­a­teur his­to­ri­an An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh, who has ter­mi­nal pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and who said that that event was prob­a­bly his last pub­lic ap­pear­ance. "It has been a won­der­ful life. It has been a short life, but you have made it a very rich ex­pe­ri­ence for me," Bisses­sars­ingh told the ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence. But Pres­i­dent Car­mona was hav­ing none of it.

"We will con­tin­ue to pray hard and we will con­tin­ue to in­voke the pow­er of God be­cause as long as you sit, as long as you stand, we feel deep in our hearts any­thing is pos­si­ble and we con­tin­ue to pray for that mir­a­cle," he said from the podi­um to Bisses­sars­ingh.

So whether Bisses­sars­ingh has come to terms with his fate or not is ir­rel­e­vant, be­cause Pres­i­dent Car­mona feels deep in his heart that God, once asked nice­ly and by the right per­son, will sus­pend the laws of na­ture. That is al­so why, two Sat­ur­days ago, Pres­i­dent Car­mona en­joined the Catholic faith­ful to not "con­cede to those who are non-be­liev­ers, to those who are ag­nos­tics, to those who are doubt­ing Thomases. Be­cause you know what ladies and gen­tle­men, boys and girls, we be­lieve in the pow­er of God, we be­lieve that in fact there is a God that will bring mir­a­cles to this land of ours".

As an athe­ist, I can­not claim to know the mind of God in the way all re­li­gious be­liev­ers do ex­cept when chil­dren are killed in hur­ri­canes, in which case God's ways be­come mys­te­ri­ous, but the log­i­cal in­fer­ence from Pres­i­dent Car­mona's in­junc­tion is that God doesn't per­form mir­a­cles for a na­tion which al­lows peo­ple to ex­press doubt about mir­a­cles. Which was why the Catholic Church had to have the In­qui­si­tion back in the day.

But, if God does in­deed an­swer Pres­i­dent Car­mona's prayers for a mir­a­cle, this will al­so prove that Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley lied about giv­ing his ap­proval for the Sep­tem­ber 5 meet­ing be­tween Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and the Pres­i­dent. Af­ter all, would God grant the Pres­i­dent's re­quest if the Pres­i­dent is a liar? Of course not, be­cause Job 34:12 clear­ly says "Of a truth, God will not do wicked­ly, and the Almighty will not per­vert jus­tice."

Ad­mit­ted­ly, though, such a re­sponse from God would raise oth­er is­sues, such as why Pres­i­dent Car­mona pre­sent­ed Min­is­ter Dil­lon with a crime-fight­ing pro­gramme. Af­ter all, the gov­ern­ment has quite a few peo­ple trained in crim­i­nol­o­gy and se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er rel­e­vant dis­ci­plines, so why does a for­mer High Court judge feel he knows what works bet­ter than these ex­perts? Un­less, of course, his crime plan was it­self mirac­u­lous.

To be sure, in his Sep­tem­ber 28 ad­dress to the na­tion, Pres­i­dent Car­mona did say, "I can­not see things go­ing wrong and re­main qui­et." But Proverbs 17:28 says "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent". How­ev­er, he ar­gued that he was "a cit­i­zen of this coun­try and like every oth­er cit­i­zen of this Re­pub­lic I can le­git­i­mate­ly of­fer sug­ges­tions, with­in my con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit, to al­le­vi­ate cer­tain is­sues that plague us as a na­tion."

Now I too am a cit­i­zen of this Re­pub­lic who has read more ex­perts on crime than Pres­i­dent Car­mona: but, if I call Min­is­ter Dil­lon's of­fice and ask to have a meet­ing with him on Oc­to­ber 31 or any oth­er day when witch­es walk the Earth, I sus­pect I would be told he's not avail­able and nev­er would be. That would make me not a cit­i­zen like Pres­i­dent Car­mona, as well as Ro­mans 13:6 which says "This is al­so why you pay tax­es, for the au­thor­i­ties are God's ser­vants, who give their full time to gov­ern­ing" since the Pres­i­dent pays no tax­es on the near­ly $100,000 in­clud­ing al­lowances he gets every month. How­ev­er, as he point­ed out in his speech, he did have to buy a gen­er­a­tor and a wa­ter tank and sun­dries for two years un­til the Pres­i­dent's Cot­tage was re­fur­bished, amount­ing to $300,000 (or about 16 per cent of his earn­ings in that time-frame) which he nev­er asked back for.

"I am a sim­ple man with a big heart," he said, and re­search does in­deed sug­gest that wine is good for the heart. In this re­gard, Pres­i­dent Car­mona ex­plained that the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent de­cid­ed to buy red and white and sparkling wine in bot­tles with the Pres­i­den­tial seal at a to­tal cost of $1,483,638 in or­der to save mon­ey and pre­vent theft. How­ev­er, he did not say why this wasn't al­so done for rum and scotch and vod­ka, which are less vari­able spir­its, nor did he re­veal if the "qual­i­ty wine" was dry or just sar­cas­tic.

In con­clud­ing his ad­dress, Pres­i­dent Car­mona failed to ad­dress one oth­er al­le­ga­tion but as­sert­ed, "I'm all for trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty". So I guess or­di­nary cit­i­zens will soon be told whether his moth­er-in-law is on staff at the Pres­i­dent's House and, if so, whether she's paid for won­der­ing why her daugh­ter mar­ried him.

�2 Kevin Baldeosingh is a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els, and co-au­thor of a Caribbean his­to­ry text­book.