Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er broke his si­lence yes­ter­day, open­ly de­clar­ing that he had "noth­ing to be afraid of" as he dis­missed calls for him to step down.

Warn­er, whose son Daryan is said to be as­sist­ing the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) and the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS) in the Unit­ed States in a mat­ter re­lat­ing to a cor­rup­tion probe in­volv­ing Fi­fa, spoke briefly with re­porters dur­ing the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion first po­lice youth clubs sports and fam­i­ly day at Ed­in­burgh Recre­ation Grounds, Ch­agua­nas.

The min­is­ter ini­tial­ly hes­i­tat­ed when ap­proached by re­porters, but lat­er al­lowed ques­tions.

Warn­er likened the at­tacks on him to the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus Christ which was marked by Chris­tians on Good Fri­day.

He said, "I do not think you know of any oth­er politi­cian, who, for the last three years has been ma­ligned and who has been cru­ci­fied as I have been and the one ob­jec­tive in mind is to get rid of Jack Warn­er."

This, as he re­spond­ed to calls made on Thurs­day by Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah who called for Warn­er's re­moval af­ter me­dia re­ports sur­faced about the FBI/IRS probe.

Yes­ter­day, Warn­er de­clared, "I doh have to re­spond to them. Yes­ter­day was the Cru­ci­fix­ion, to­day (Sat­ur­day) is not, and I will con­tin­ue and I will do what I have to do. I have noth­ing to be afraid of and I sleep very sound­ly at night."

The min­is­ter said that he be­lieved the at­tacks against him would not stop.

How­ev­er, he said con­fi­dent­ly, "I will not be in any­way at all as­sailed by what they are try­ing do in any way. Like Mervyn Cord­ner (who al­leged the Fly­ing Squad was re­vamped), like Ver­non De Li­ma, that too shall pass and af­ter that has passed there will be oth­ers that they will raise but I am not fazed, not in the least be­cause I say again–that too shall pass away."

He said there were those who be­lieve that if they got rid of him "then you get rid of a ma­jor chunk or chink in the Gov­ern­ment's ar­mour–I say, well fine."

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter has­tened to add that if they got rid of him to­day, "to­mor­row they go af­ter some­body else, and some­body else the fol­low­ing day. That is their modus operan­di. That is what they want."

Yes­ter­day's sports and fam­i­ly day, which was al­so at­tend­ed by act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and co-or­di­nat­ed by Se­nior Supt John­ny Abra­ham, fea­tured an en­ter­tain­ing march past from youth clubs in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion in­clud­ing Ca­paro/Palmiste, Cou­va, Cunu­pia, Ed­in­burgh 500, Bras­so/Flana­gin, Tabaquite, Ca­roni and Las Lo­mas.

Warn­er said he was pleased with the re­sponse by young peo­ple who have joined the po­lice youth clubs. He said the clubs formed part of his min­istry's plan to re­duce crime.

The min­is­ter, like Se­nior Supt Abra­ham, lament­ed the fact that girls were out­num­ber­ing boys at the clubs.

How­ev­er, he said it was a na­tion­al prob­lem which need­ed to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

"Even in the schools, the class­rooms, the ex­ams, you see the girls out­num­ber­ing the boys and in the schools there are more fe­male teach­ers than male. So it is not on­ly a prob­lem af­fect­ing the po­lice youth clubs, it is a whole na­tion­al prob­lem which we have to treat and find the cause for and deal with. So it has to be done on a col­lec­tive ba­sis," he said.