Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er is tak­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day to court for what Warn­er claimed yes­ter­day was slan­der. The ac­tion by Warn­er is the lat­est sal­vo be­tween the es­tranged MP and Pan­day, the UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader.

The mat­ter in­volved com­ments re­port­ed­ly made by Pan­day in a ra­dio in­ter­view which in­volved the $309,000 which Warn­er gave to the Ch­agua­nas Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Warn­er has re­tained British coun­sel Al­lan New­man to rep­re­sent him and has for­ward­ed a copy of the tape to his lawyer via Fedex yes­ter­day. "How could his col­leagues Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar, Tim Gopeesingh and Wade Mark al­low him (Pan­day) to be­have this way?" Warn­er asked in a tele­phone in­ter­view. Warn­er said his aim was to as­sist the re­trenched work­ers of the bor­ough. "Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Hazel Man­ning is cor­rect to look at the sit­u­a­tion," he said.

"They are cre­ative and I know they will come up with some­thing. "What I want­ed was to make it pos­si­ble to put food on the ta­bles of those peo­ple. I am the granter of that cheque and Pan­day is go­ing to pay for tar­nish­ing my im­age lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. He is go­ing to have a long hot sum­mer." Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Man­ning has sought the ad­vice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on whether Warn­er can pay the wages of 54 work­ers of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.