The Pastor and the Businessman

Danah Alleyne and her parents should be held fully accountable for this teenager's lascivious public behaviour. At 15 years of age, it is culturally narrow-minded for anyone to believe that Miss Alleyne was not and is not fully aware of her actions, and now, we blame the Businessman and the Pastor for her lack of judgement and self-respect. Even pastor Manning wants to voice his opinion, along with his Minister of Tourism - nothing better to do with taxpayers' time?

I am not implying that Zen management should not be fined or reprimanded in some way for their lax security measures that night and any night, anyone believing for one second that their security checks are as tight as they should be, are far removed from "trikidadian" culture, not even the hardest head should be able to be fooled by her baby face, but they are in no way responsible for Miss Alleyne's behaviour. This is typical trinidadian behaviour, most of us growing up learning to dance from our big cousins, in more recent times, learning to "flex", "dutty wine", "hot wuk" and "genie wine" from television, from the numerous parties on the circuit throughtout the year and from our lauded carnival. You think Zen's door policy is to be blamed for the mindset of children like Danah Alleyne, and her father's a pastor? What about the rest of us! I think Pastor Alleyne and Pastor Manning need to start rethinking their sermons to their respective flocks, both of them are failing.

This fiasco is quickly swivelling its focus. The Police are now searching for sex tapes. This opens up an entirely new can of worms on the presumptions being made by our officers of the law, that somehow they suspect pornographic materials being either safeguarded at Zen nightclub, or filmed there! Are they purporting that these tapes are of Miss Alleyne and Akon? The illegality of pornography on its own demonstrates the stranglehold of expression and the archaic thinking of our policy-makers on a whole, but the swift shift of attention from "poor" Miss Alleyne to the dubious workings of an upscale trinidadian nightclub, with Ministers on high calling for the head of Mr Soong is all too suspect, far too soap opera-like for a country soaked in the sadness of criminality.

I wonder if anyone has ever investigated the ages of the young girls that Machel terrorizes with his winer-boy antics, year in, year out.