Yvonne Webb

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted to chinks in the po­lit­i­cal ar­mour of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Warn­er spoke of "un­ex­pect­ed in­trigue, in­fight­ing and back­bit­ing" among his col­leagues in the five-par­ty coali­tion that makes up the Gov­ern­ment. The min­is­ter, who has been crit­i­cised for his uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion to sign off on two con­tracts for the Pi­ar­co and Crown Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ports, said there was an ab­sence of team­work among some of his col­leagues. He al­so said his re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to halt the projects, "is com­ing. It will come. It will come. It is com­ing." Speak­ing to re­porters be­fore a tour of bad roads in the con­stituen­cies of Moru­ga/Table­land and Princes Town, Warn­er de­nied the sit­u­a­tion had left him frus­trat­ed.

He said: "Af­ter four months, I ex­pect­ed most of this. Noth­ing here has re­al­ly fazed me. What I did not ex­pect was the kind of in­trigue and in­fight­ing and back­bit­ing and so on. I did not ex­pect that." He said he ex­pect­ed a mea­sure of dif­fi­cul­ty, "be­cause there is a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, ac­tu­al­ly, from the one I have been used to in Fi­fa and Con­ca­caf, where I come from." He said in those or­gan­i­sa­tions things were done dif­fer­ent­ly and he now had to get used to that (re­fer­ring to be­ing in Gov­ern­ment). "So I have no prob­lems with that. What I have a prob­lem with is a lack of the col­le­gial ef­fort, where you have work to do and where you have col­leagues who you be­lieve should be able to work as a team and that is not hap­pen­ing.

"I tell you this, that too will pass away," he said. Re­spond­ing to com­ments from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley that he should be dis­ci­plined, Warn­er said: "I have no in­ten­tion of dig­ni­fy­ing Mr Row­ley's piece of fool­ish­ness. "Mr Row­ley is clutch­ing at straws and if he be­lieves he can use that to re­vive his dy­ing po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, I have news for him. He can use any­thing else but not Jack Warn­er." On the is­sue of the ur­gent ap­point­ment of an Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Board, al­so put for­ward by Row­ley, Warn­er said he could not say when one would be ap­point­ed. As to the dan­ger posed to users of the two air­ports, now that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has halt­ed the con­tracts, Warn­er said he did what he had to do to avert any dan­ger.