One of the mem­ber-par­ties of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), is call­ing for Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to "step aside from his min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties" pend­ing the com­ple­tion of con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions of bribery brought against him. Warn­er, vice pres­i­dent of world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body, Fi­fa, is to an­swer the charge be­fore the or­gan­i­sa­tion's Ethics Com­mit­tee. He main­tains his in­no­cence claim­ing a con­spir­a­cy against him. The COP, in a state­ment signed by its chair­man Joseph Toney and is­sued at the week­end, said it is with dis­tress that it takes note of the de­vel­op­ments in­volv­ing Warn­er in Fi­fa.

Toney said: "A crit­i­cal as­pect of good gov­er­nance is the main­te­nance of stan­dards of ethics and in­tegri­ty among those en­trust­ed with high pub­lic of­fice." Toney, a for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter said: "Giv­en the na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions and the de­ci­sion of the Ethics Com­mit­tee of Fi­fa, we ex­pect that the min­is­ter will do the right thing and step aside pend­ing the com­ple­tion of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions." And MP for Arou­ca/Mal­oney Ali­cia Hospedales said yes­ter­day Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must re­voke Warn­er's ap­point­ment. She want­ed to know why for­mer plan­ning min­is­ter Mary King was dis­missed im­me­di­ate­ly cer­tain al­le­ga­tions were made against her while Warn­er was not be side­lined with bribery charges against him by Fi­fa. She feels the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age re­mains at stake while Warn­er re­tains his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio.