Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man, Jack Warn­er, says "it would be a bless­ing to our na­tion," should Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning re­sign and fol­low the ex­am­ple of for­mer Unit­ed King­dom Prime Min­is­ter, Tony Blair, who stepped down from of­fice af­ter di­min­ish­ing ap­proval of his lead­er­ship. "Tony Blair did not an­nounce a snap elec­tion; he re­signed as Prime Min­is­ter, as Leader of the Labour Par­ty, and as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment," Warn­er said, adding: "Had the Prime Min­is­ter been ca­pa­ble of un­der­stand­ing that de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus em­bod­ies recog­nised stan­dards of gov­er­nance, he would al­ready have done the ho­n­ourable thing and re­signed from the of­fices of the leader of the gov­ern­ment and the leader of the PNM; both of which he brought in­to wide­spread dis­re­pute." Warn­er, who is in Ko­rea on Fi­fa busi­ness, plans to mount pres­sure on Man­ning to re­sign.

With the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port on the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor set to be laid in the Sen­ate to­day, Warn­er main­tained that Man­ning brought the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice in­to dis­re­pute, through his re­peat­ed de­fences for Calder Hart, among oth­er things. "It is ob­vi­ous to many that Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's un­der­stand­ing of de­vel­oped coun­try stan­dards does not ex­tend much be­yond the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that Calder Hart's non-pro­duc­tive mega-struc­tures rep­re­sent," Warn­er said. He added that Man­ning's "pub­lic cham­pi­oning" for Hart, Ude­cott's for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, was un­ac­cept­able for a prime min­is­ter. "The Prime Min­is­ter's pub­lic cham­pi­oning of Calder Hart, when he had knowl­edge that the Ude­cott czar was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal con­duct, is an­oth­er rea­son for Patrick Man­ning to seek the ca­pac­i­ty to do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign.

"That is what a Prime Min­is­ter who un­der­stands de­vel­oped coun­try stan­dards of gov­er­nance would have al­ready done." Warn­er stressed that Man­ning chose to en­gage in "se­r­i­al bungling, gen­er­al abuse of of­fice, nepo­tism, mis­use of pub­lic funds, de­cep­tion in Par­lia­ment and vi­o­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens of our re­pub­lic." "If Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's self-in­flict­ed act of po­lit­i­cal eu­thana­sia in an­nounc­ing an ear­ly elec­tion is his ver­sion of a res­ig­na­tion, the na­tion ac­cepts it," Warn­er said. "(The na­tion ac­cepts it) even though he (Man­ning) has al­ready be­gun to use this gam­bit for a mas­sive out­pour­ing of pub­lic funds from a dwin­dling trea­sury in a bla­tant and all too fa­mil­iar at­tempt at brib­ing the elec­torate." Warn­er al­so raised con­cerns about Man­ning mis­lead­ing the Par­lia­ment on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, and not­ed that Man­ning should "at­tempt now to rise to de­vel­oped coun­try gov­er­nance stan­dards and re­sign for ly­ing to Par­lia­ment and for mak­ing it a habit.

"He should not as­pire to wait un­til 2020 to do the ho­n­ourable thing," Warn­er added that no Com­mon­wealth leader "has been so ex­co­ri­at­ed by the Privy Coun­cil for vi­o­lat­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens" as Man­ning. "In any na­tion se­ri­ous­ly as­pir­ing to de­vel­oped coun­try stan­dards in pub­lic af­fairs, a Prime Min­is­ter would have done the ho­n­ourable thing and re­signed af­ter the first scathing Privy Coun­cil judg­ment," Warn­er said.