Legal vs moral rights
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.

logo“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?