Camille Clarke

Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era is call­ing for the re­moval of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.He was speak­ing at a round­table pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Bournes Road, St James, on Mon­day night.Cabr­era said: "I am call­ing for the PM to re­move from of­fice forth­with Jack Warn­er. The Prime Min­is­ter is of the view that min­is­ter is the best thing since sliced bread. She has con­fused work eth­ic with an ap­pli­ca­tion of moral­i­ty.

"Ethics con­sist of what is right against what is wrong, ethics con­sist of what is fair against what is un­fair, ethics com­prise of what is just than what is un­just. "That is why the en­tire coun­try is cry­ing out for jus­tice. There ap­pears to be no jus­tice but a de­nial of jus­tice."How can we fight crime when there are se­ri­ous ques­tions hang­ing over the head of the head of the chief crime­fight­er?" he asked.

Cabr­era said the Prime Min­is­ter had a bad habit of pass­ing the buck but when an en­gine was be­hav­ing bad­ly it need­ed a com­plete shut­down or over­haul.He added: "This Gov­ern­ment has shown it­self to be an ab­solute fail­ure when it comes to the se­ri­ous ques­tion of crime."A min­is­ter pro­claim­ing three months af­ter his Gov­ern­ment came in­to pow­er that crime would be a thing of the past... and it is ev­i­dent the Gov­ern­ment has no plans to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion."

Cabr­era said many peo­ple hoped for an im­prove­ment when Warn­er as­sumed the port­fo­lio."Peo­ple are so fed up with vi­o­lent crimes that they are will­ing to sac­ri­fice their per­son­al rights in or­der to fix the prob­lem. This is what leads to dic­ta­tor­ship and that is what Jack is bank­ing on," he said.

Cabr­era said for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter John Sandy was an ab­ject fail­ure and pre­cept­ing sol­diers would not fix the prob­lem.He said the Cham­ber of Com­merce, Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants and As­so­ci­a­tion, Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion and Fi­tun, a group of trade unions, had called for that idea to be dropped.

Re­fer­ring to al­le­ga­tions about the new­ly re-formed Fly­ing Squad, Cabr­era said: "It should be not­ed that the pop­u­la­tion of this coun­try is aware that re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer (Mervyn) Cord­ner is not a mad­man. "My in­for­ma­tion is that the Fly­ing Squad did op­er­ate and the re­al rea­son for its dis­band­ment is that in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by this new Fly­ing Squad was too hot for the Gov­ern­ment to han­dle," he said.

Cabr­era said dur­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, unions met with "her majesty," who said she could not give more than five per cent, and if she did, the Gov­ern­ment's so­cial pro­grammes would be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.He said the unions marched through the streets soon af­ter they were pre­sent­ed with the five per cent wage cap.

"When, lo and be­hold, the OW­TU (Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union) reg­is­tered its nine per cent vic­to­ry in the Petrotrin ne­go­ti­a­tions, the la­dy then pro­claimed there was no five per cent wage cap. We could not be­lieve our ears. How could an elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive be so brazen?" he asked."But ly­ing is just part of the mod­ule. Ar­ro­gance proved to be the oth­er ma­jor char­ac­ter­is­tic. Who dis­plays more ar­ro­gance than Jack him­self? Whether it is cow­boy Jack, Fi­fa Jack... when it comes to Jack and most of his fel­low min­is­ters," he said.

Cabr­era al­so said a file al­ready had been opened at the of­fice of the BIG­WU for wrong­ful dis­missal of Juli­et Davy.Davy, who was a for­mer UNC ac­tivist, was fired from her job as a Field Of­fi­cer with the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed."The UNC par­ty, to which I once be­longed, is call­ing my union a PNM union be­cause every­body they fire come to us. URP, CEPEP, Ned­co, RHA."

Cabr­era con­grat­u­lat­ed the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice on its re­moval as one of the five par­ties which form the coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.