Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was cho­sen to act in her ab­sence from T&T for the next sev­en days be­cause of his com­pe­tence. She said so in a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. "He is a com­pe­tent per­son to act as PM. He has act­ed be­fore and I have no rea­son to be­lieve he would not do a good job," PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. Warn­er was the first min­is­ter to act for Per­sad-Bisses­sar and deputised fre­quent­ly in the ear­ly months of the two-year Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so has cho­sen Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Win­ston Dook­er­an and leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, Er­rol McLeod. The COP and the MSJ now have new lead­ers in Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har and Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah re­spec­tive­ly.

Ra­mad­har al­so was giv­en a 24-hour act­ing ap­point­ment as PM. He has sub­se­quent­ly made pub­lic crit­i­cisms of the Prime Min­is­ter for her role in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' poach­ing of for­mer COP mem­ber and may­or Mar­lene Coudray.Since Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­point­ment as Prime Min­is­ter she al­ways has ap­point­ed elect­ed MPs to act as PM. Dur­ing the on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween mem­bers of the PP Gov­ern­ment, the on­ly peo­ple to act in her ab­sence have been Ra­mad­har and Warn­er, who is the chair­man of the UNC. A re­lease is­sued ear­li­er from her of­fice said Warn­er would act as PM as Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­parts Port-of-Spain to­day for Be­lize to par­tic­i­pate in two Com­mon­wealth Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Fo­rum (CLGF) events. To­mor­row, she will launch the Caribbean Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme. That pro­gramme is a CAN$23.2 mil­lion six-year project fund­ed by the Cana­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment As­so­ci­a­tion, which seeks to strength­en lo­cal gov­er­nance and stim­u­late lo­cal eco­nom­ic growth through­out the re­gion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar will al­so par­tic­i­pate in the CLGF an­nu­al board meet­ing on Thurs­day. She will lat­er trav­el to New York to ad­dress a Unit­ed Na­tions high-lev­el the­mat­ic de­bate on "the State of the World Econ­o­my and Fi­nance in 2012."

She al­so is ex­pect­ed to meet with ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the UN and T&T. The PM was al­so in­vit­ed to ad­dress New York Uni­ver­si­ty's con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar will then trav­el to Bar­ba­dos for a spe­cial Cari­com meet­ing to dis­cuss the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Last month Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Par­lia­ment T&T would move to abol­ish crim­i­nal ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil and ac­cept the CCJ for such mat­ters. She re­turns home on May 22.