An­na-Lisa Paul

“God has put you down in the val­ley to learn lessons and the minute you learn those lessons and turn and walk with God, the pres­ence of God to gov­ern will re­turn to your midst.”

Con­vey­ing God’s word to those present at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Thanks­giv­ing Ser­vice on Sat­ur­day in To­ba­go, Rev­erend Stephanie Wash­ing­ton John summed up her ser­mon as she called on par­ty of­fi­cials to be hum­ble and once again en­gage with the peo­ple.

Say­ing the PNM’s ap­par­ent loss of favour in To­ba­go with­in re­cent times was the re­sult of God seek­ing to re­in­force life lessons, she said, “Of­ten times we make the mis­take of on­ly want­i­ng min­is­ters when we want vic­to­ry. That’s a mis­take we make.”

Say­ing God was pre­sid­ing in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), John said, “That’s where we want to get back so we have to hear what God is say­ing.”

She added, “We are talk­ing about gov­er­nance. You can­not leave God’s peo­ple out of gov­er­nance. And you have to hear what the Lord is say­ing.”

She said God had spo­ken to her about the par­ty on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020 and had in­di­cat­ed that war had been de­clared against the PNM. She said the 14-1 vic­to­ry en­joyed by the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) last De­cem­ber had been or­ches­trat­ed by God and the on­ly way the PNM could re­gain its pow­er and glo­ry was to, “give God the ho­n­our and glo­ry and the praise that is due to his match-less name, and to obey and to seek him.”

She called on of­fi­cials to turn to God for help in de­ter­min­ing strate­gies.

“Seek him for the sys­tems and poli­cies that would suit this sea­son.”

To the cur­rent crop of young ex­ec­u­tives, she ad­vised, “You have to be mind­ful of the role you now play in lead­er­ship. Con­sult with your el­ders. Look at the pro­ce­dures that are al­ready laid down.

“Some­times we don’t take ad­vice from peo­ple be­cause we are in gov­er­nance. Don’t ever feel you are too young or too in­tel­li­gent to seek coun­sel from those who went be­fore.

“They may not al­ways be right and it may not al­ways fit the present sea­son we are in be­cause your chal­lenge now is to be rel­e­vant to the sea­son that we are in­to, the prob­lems that we face. How can you now in a sea­son like this, when the world is in so much tur­moil, when we have COVID in our midst, still rack­ing up in­fec­tions and then we look­ing now at mon­key­pox, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence on the rise, mur­ders, we have so much ills in so­ci­ety. How can you now in the To­ba­go sce­nario, in the na­tion­al sce­nario…how can you now im­pact this gen­er­a­tion with strate­gies, with poli­cies, with sys­tems that can im­prove the lives of the peo­ple so that every­one feels com­fort­able and that you as a leader, es­pe­cial­ly po­lit­i­cal leader, can have that dri­ve, give peo­ple that dri­ve, rekin­dle that fire with­in peo­ple to move for­ward…it’s not easy.”

How­ev­er, John warned, “If you leave us out of your dis­cus­sions, you will suf­fer the fate.”

While some peo­ple think the PNM will nev­er be re­vived again, John dis­missed this, as she said God made the laws and pol­i­cy­mak­ers hold­ing high of­fice were chang­ing them.

“He is an­gry about that. He wants those in lead­er­ship to be hum­ble, to look at the plight of the poor, the dis­pos­sessed, the maimed, the lame, the blind, the men­tal­ly ill. That’s the charge. He wants us to be fair and im­par­tial. In all these ways, we have an­gered God and so, he has put us down that we could learn the les­son.”

She said all was not lost when God’s peo­ple lis­ten and re­pent, adding it is the same God that will lift the par­ty back up when the lessons are heed­ed. She de­clined to re­veal what God had spo­ken to her about the PNM par­ty groups, but said she is will­ing to speak to any­one pri­vate­ly who wants to know.

Ad­mit­ting the par­ty had made mis­takes along the way, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis said, “If we are hon­est with our­selves and as we look back at some of the mis­takes we have made, we must ad­mit that at times, we did not fol­low our (par­ty) con­sti­tu­tion, and at times, we strayed from the right path.”

Re­in­forc­ing the PNM’s track record de­spite re­cent de­feats, he said one al­ways had to give thanks to God. He ad­vised the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive to form a 17th com­mit­tee - a PNM ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal com­mit­tee as, "It was im­por­tant for us to in­clude God. It is im­por­tant for us to in­clude God­ly ad­vice."