Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter and chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Jack Warn­er says he is ap­palled by the "thought­less and reck­less" com­ments made by chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Dr Er­ic St Cyr. St Cyr, in a news­pa­per re­port yes­ter­day, was quot­ed as say­ing that the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy about the award of a $40 mil­lion NP con­tract-for which Ralph Gopaul was a bid­der-could have been avoid­ed if Per­sad-Bisses­sar had stayed at a ho­tel. Warn­er, in a state­ment af­ter yes­ter­day's post Cab­i­net news brief­ing in To­ba­go, said with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion to the of­fice St Cyr held, he "prej­u­diced him­self with­out avail­ing him­self of the de­tails of a mat­ter that may or may not be the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion."

"Hav­ing con­fessed that his find­ings are with­out mer­it be­cause 'we haven't in­ves­ti­gat­ed or gone in­to the de­tails' the chair­man, whose ac­tions re­sem­ble a man of un­lim­it­ed vi­sion and fore­sight of­fers an opin­ion which clear­ly can on­ly be de­scribed as a colos­sal lapse in judg­ment." Warn­er claimed it was not the first time St Cyr had cho­sen to ar­tic­u­late on mat­ters over which he (St Cyr) has nei­ther the com­pe­tence nor the in­tel­li­gence to prop­er­ly analyse, and again it will not be the first time that he is wrong. Warn­er said on June 21, 2010, it was St Cyr's learned opin­ion that "Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er should choose be­tween his Cab­i­net po­si­tion and his long­stand­ing of­fice as a Fi­fa vice-Pres­i­dent and it was not long af­ter that em­i­nent ju­rists across the Caribbean of­fered opin­ions that high­light­ed the fol­ly of Dr St Cyr's state­ments."

Warn­er said the is­sue was even graver than a mat­ter of be­ing right or wrong. He said if the mat­ter was re­ferred to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, then St Cyr must now re­cuse him­self from all de­lib­er­a­tions be­cause he has "pub­licly ar­tic­u­lat­ed a po­si­tion that shows a bias against the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter." "The very act alone of pre­ma­ture­ly of­fer­ing opin­ions on mat­ters with­out a thor­ough analy­sis of the facts makes him un­fit to hold any of­fice re­lat­ed to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion far more the po­si­tion of chair­man," Warn­er added. Warn­er claimed the bias shown by St Cyr made him un­fit for the of­fice he held.