‘Big crapaud, little crapaud, same handful of salt’

DEPUTY leader of the UNC Jearlean John quoted extensively from the Bible at the party’s Monday Night Forum in Chaguanas, after claiming Speaker Brigid Annisette-George had responded to a letter from Opposition Whip David Lee, by telling him they were both Catholics and sending him Bible quotations.

“Whoever holds the Office of Speaker is a creature of politics,” said John, “because they are chosen by the duly elected government, but it is an accepted convention that the office-holder, while walking a fine line, appears to hold themselves above the fray of the cut and thrust.

“The current holder of that office, by her reported actions, appears to have brought herself into partisan politics and my general principle in this regard is ‘big crapaud, little crapaud, same handful of salt.’”

Lee, said John, has since made an appointment with the Archbishop to interpret the biblical quotations he was sent.

She said Pope Francis, on a visit in June to a marginalised community in Romania, asked forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church for the discrimination and mistreatment its people had endured.

“Pope Francis stressed that in Christ’s church, there is room for everyone, while condemning the indifference that breeds prejudice and fosters anger and resentment,” she said.

John told a cheering crowd that she had walked with her Bible, and quoted Matthew 7:1-29 to Annisette-George: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

She asked of the Speaker, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

She said she hopes the Speaker’s Bible verses are not only reserved for members of the Opposition, as Annisette-George must give due consideration to the fact that the Hindu/Baptist Kamla Persad-Bissessar, at her first Cabinet meeting, committed ten per cent of her salary, and had her ministers commit five per cent of their salary to a Children’s Life Fund for children who otherwise could not afford life-saving medical attention.

“Minister Cherrie-Ann Crichlow-Cockburn bragged publicly that she had taken away 18,000 food cards from poor mothers, and their children.

“Cockburn is the one to be asked if she had children and maybe these verses should have been sent to her,” John said:

Dealing with the Prime Minister’s public meeting in the constituency of La Horquetta/Talparo, she quoted Proverbs 22:22-23, “Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and rob of life those who rob them.”

“You know elections coming when Rowley finds himself in the company of poor people,” she said adding that he had put on a “Hollywood production” in La Horquetta, where he was coasting like Academy Award-winner Denzel Washington.

“I will be convinced that Rowley serious about corruption when he locks up himself,” John said, adding that he fooled no one with his charade, not even the most gullible.