Kevon Felmine

Sug­ges­tions by for­mer Gen­der Af­fairs min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves on a morn­ing talk show that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had a drink prob­lem have raised the ire of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Warn­er, who had cast sim­i­lar as­per­sions on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress'?(UNC) in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign, came to the de­fence of the PM in Point Fortin yes­ter­day.

"I have nev­er seen the Prime Min­is­ter drunk in my life. In the past two years I have been in gov­ern­ment, I have no ev­i­dence what­so­ev­er of that," Warn­er said.

Speak­ing to re­porters at a lun­cheon to re­ward Point Fortin po­lice of­fi­cers who had seized a large cache of arms and am­mu­ni­tion, Warn­er claimed he was mis­led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj in­to stat­ing on a pub­lic po­lit­i­cal plat­form that the PM had fall­en on a stat­ue of Gand­hi while on a trip in In­dia be­cause she was drunk.

He charged that de­trac­tors had no ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing against Per­sad-Bisses­sar and so had de­cid­ed to at­tack her char­ac­ter in­stead. He spoke can­did­ly about the po­lit­i­cal feud­ing dur­ing the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions and be­fore when Warn­er, Ma­haraj and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters had em­barked on a car­a­van for change while Bas­deo Pan­day was the par­ty's leader.

Warn­er said he made the er­ror of re­peat­ing the ru­mour on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form with­out in­ves­ti­gat­ing, but when he re­alised it was an un­truth, he apol­o­gised to the PM. Re­spond­ing to crit­ics who have open­ly won­dered what se­cret he was hold­ing for the PM, to cause her not to re­move him from her Cab­i­net and Gov­ern­ment, Warn­er de­clared, "I have no files on the PM."

Chastis­ing St Rose-Greaves, with whom he was at odds over her an­ti-cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment stance, Warn­er said she had tak­en her tirade too far. He said she and sev­er­al oth­er politi­cians were us­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh's hunger strike in an at­tempt to re­vive their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers. "What I will tell you, though, is that this Gov­ern­ment will not budge and those has-been politi­cians who want to eat of his car­cass, let them go ahead."

Warn­er said Kublals­ingh had been play­ing the fool over the past eight days. "If I were Kublals­ingh, I would al­low peo­ple to see what I am do­ing be­tween 6 pm and 6 am. Ask him, al­so, why his wife is not with him." Unit­ed Voice blog­gers have been ques­tion­ing the ab­sence of Kublals­ingh's wife Dr Sylvia Mood­ie-Kublals­ingh and their son, who is study­ing law at UWI in Bar­ba­dos.

Un­til Fri­day, nei­ther his wife, whose eth­nic­i­ty has al­so been drawn in­to the con­tro­ver­sy, nor son has been vis­i­ble at Kublals­ingh's side, dur­ing his nine-day hunger strike.

Warn­er de­clared that the hunger strike was a farce. "If he is ac­tu­al­ly fast­ing, then my name is Barack Oba­ma." He an­nounced that to­mor­row he will hold a pub­lic meet­ing at the Debe High School to deal with sev­er­al is­sues re­lat­ing to the con­tro­ver­sial high­way.