Richard Lord

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er is to car­ry out the du­ties of Prime Min­is­ter of T&T dur­ing the ab­sence of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from Sun­day to Ju­ly 12. This was re­vealed by Press Sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter Garvin Nicholas, while chair­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. Warn­er, who is al­so vice-pres­i­dent of world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body Fi­fa, gets the ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty days af­ter a rag­ing con­tro­ver­sy over his abil­i­ty to car­ry out the jobs as min­is­ter and a Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive at the same time.

He was cleared on the ad­vice of four le­gal ex­perts. Per­sad-Bisses­sar will lead a T&T Gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tion, which in­cludes For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz to the 31st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the heads of gov­ern­ment in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, from Ju­ly 4 to Ju­ly 7. Nicholas said the new T&T Prime Min­is­ter would ad­dress the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Sun­day and would speak dur­ing the Hu­man and So­cial De­vel­op­ment ses­sion on the is­sue of crime and se­cu­ri­ty. Dur­ing her vis­it to Ja­maica, Per­sad-Bisses­sar would al­so con­duct "a work­ing vis­it" to Kingston on the in­vi­ta­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing, Nicholas added.

He said this ex­er­cise would take place be­tween Ju­ly 8 and 9. Nicholas said that af­ter that vis­it, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is sched­uled to vis­it Mi­a­mi to spend some time with her fam­i­ly there and al­so at­tend a func­tion on Ju­ly 10. She would re­turn home on Ju­ly 12, he added. It will be Per­sad-Bisses­sar's first of­fi­cial vis­it abroad since be­ing elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter on May 24. And at least two gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion to au­tho­rise Warn­er to act in her ab­sence. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said Warn­er emerged as the can­di­date with the most votes in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion and he was al­so the chair­man of the largest unit of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion– the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

"He was there­fore an ob­vi­ous choice for this act­ing prime min­is­ter­ship and the Prime Min­is­ter in her wis­dom chose him...We all con­grat­u­late him," Ram­lo­gan said. Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Anil Roberts said the PM should be con­grat­u­lat­ed for "hav­ing the for­ti­tude, the strength, the un­der­stand­ing and the care for the peo­ple to ap­point a du­ly elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment to act as Prime Min­is­ter." See Page A11