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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Panday: Warner must really have their files

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20111024

Em­bat­tled Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er can­not be touched de­spite re­cur­ring al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing on his part be­cause he holds Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the mem­bers of her gov­ern­ment to ran­som with files he once claimed to have on them. This was among the many sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day in an in­ter­view. The re­cent re­lease of a video record­ing by Lon­don's Tele­graph news­pa­per, cites Warn­er as hav­ing al­leged­ly urged of­fi­cials of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU), to ac­cept a US$40,000 gift on May 11 at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

The "gifts"were al­leged to be in­duce­ments to sup­port Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam's FI­FA pres­i­den­tial bid.

Pan­day said: "I am now be­gin­ning to be­lieve Mr Warn­er when he said he had a file on them be­cause it seems as though he can­not be touched, even when the ev­i­dence is glar­ing. "If, by his own ad­mis­sion, he said he hand­ed mon­ey over in the cir­cum­stances in which it was said and still, the Prime Min­is­ter doesn't be­lieve there was any wrong­do­ing, then it must be that he has a file." Asked whether he had much con­fi­dence in the out­come of this Warn­er mat­ter Pan­day said he was sure Ram­lo­gan "will not find any­thing" against the Works Min­is­ter.

He said this was part­ly be­cause Ram­lo­gan, like oth­er mem­bers of Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Cab­i­net, "were more in­ter­est­ed in hold­ing on to their of­fice as though it were the most valu­able pos­ses­sion they ever had." "The Prime Min­is­ter has got to take a de­ci­sion on this mat­ter and I be­lieve she is try­ing to avoid tak­ing that de­ci­sion by hand­ing the prob­lem to the AG, who I can pre­dict, will give a non­sen­si­cal le­gal de­ci­sion in favour of Warn­er."The mo­ment the Prime Min­is­ter said she was re­fer­ring the Warn­er mat­ter to the AG, I knew they were go­ing to cook it up," he said. Pan­day added: "I don't think Warn­er is be­ing treat­ed light­ly, but with fear. I think he's hold­ing some­thing over them and they can't touch him and their ac­tions seem to con­firm that he has files con­tain­ing dele­te­ri­ous mat­ter against them."

He said while there were some who re­gard­ed Warn­er as an as­set to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, "he is al­so a tremen­dous li­a­bil­i­ty" and the fact that he "works hard" does not mit­i­gate him from these FI­FA al­le­ga­tions which have now re-sur­faced. "They will have to weigh, in their own minds, what is right and the pub­lic will judge them come the next elec­tion," Pan­day said. The for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress added that since Warn­er has called up­on oth­er peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice to re­sign for al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, the cur­rent predica­ment he had found him­self in was iron­ic and "would be even com­i­cal, had it not been such a tragedy for the coun­try." Com­ment­ing on the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter di­rect­ed to the for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, Pan­day said the move was a "dis­trac­tion" from the Warn­er is­sue and he ques­tioned why civ­il and not crim­i­nal ac­tion was pur­sued in the mat­ter.

"Is it that they have ev­i­dence that sup­ports a civ­il and not a crim­i­nal ac­tion? They have to ex­plain all of this to the peo­ple."They just can't say they're bring­ing civ­il ac­tion when crim­i­nal ac­tion ought to be brought. It is al­most an ad­mis­sion of de­feat," he said. "The gov­ern­ment is very fa­mous for its un­can­ny abil­i­ty to in­flict a smoke­screen up­on the pop­u­la­tion when­ev­er they are in trou­ble and al­most every­thing they do is in or­der to serve as a dis­trac­tion. "They learnt that beau­ti­ful­ly from Patrick Man­ning-a true mas­ter of the art," Pan­day said.


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