Shas­tri Boodan

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, in a fight­ing mood yes­ter­day, said even though the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (De­fence and Po­lice Com­plaints) Bill was shot down by the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, he be­lieves it will make a suc­cess­ful come­back.Speak­ing with re­porters at his Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Warn­er said the in­de­pen­dents did not ful­ly un­der­stand the in­ten­tion of the bill and its re­la­tion to the on­go­ing bat­tle against crime.

"I could em­pathise with the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, who did not un­der­stand the his­to­ry and the ra­tio­nale for the bill, be­cause they do not rep­re­sent any vot­ers or con­stituents like we do."We–ex­cept the PNM MPs with their own agen­da–un­der­stand the cries of the peo­ple and vic­tims of crime."These sen­a­tors do not have that lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion. Our role for the next few days is to trans­fer that lev­el of un­der­stand­ing to them."

When de­bate on the bill be­gan in the Sen­ate last week, it did not get the sup­port it need­ed from the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The bill, which needs a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, would give sol­diers the same pow­ers and im­mu­ni­ties as mem­bers of the po­lice ser­vice.On Wednes­day, the Gov­ern­ment ad­journed the de­bate to April 23. Sen­ate leader Gan­ga Singh said the Gov­ern­ment had lis­tened to the con­cerns raised and would re­view the bill.

Warn­er said for far too long cer­tain groups had dis­tanced them­selves from the ef­fects of crime."One gets the im­pres­sion that peo­ple be­come con­cerned when their rel­a­tives and friends be­come af­fect­ed, but that must not be the norm in this coun­try."The norm in this coun­try must be where we are above bi­par­ti­san pol­i­tics on mat­ters like crime and look at what is good for the whole, and it's in that con­text that we have to go back and re­strate­gise and the bill will be­come ac­cept­ed."

Warn­er said not even the PNM would ben­e­fit po­lit­i­cal­ly from crime and if it were not tack­led to­day with full force, the gen­er­a­tions to come would feel the blows. He said for­mer prime min­is­ter and PNM leader Patrick Man­ning "did not con­tain crime...that is why we are fac­ing the whirl­wind we are fac­ing to­day."

Warn­er, who at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day morn­ing of Jerome Ram­sa­hai, who was grue­some­ly mur­dered, said he had been told the po­lice were mak­ing a break­through in the crime and would be is­su­ing a state­ment very soon.Yes­ter­day too Warn­er put the me­dia un­der the mi­cro­scope. He has come un­der in­tense scruti­ny re­cent­ly af­ter re­ports that his son Daryan was a co-op­er­at­ing wit­ness in an FBI in­ves­ti­ga­tion said to be con­nect­ed with in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball.

In a pre­pared state­ment, Warn­er ar­gued that he had a right not to an­swer ques­tions which he said could im­pugn his char­ac­ter and were posed by jour­nal­ists with their own agen­das.Warn­er said he had am­ple ev­i­dence of defam­a­to­ry ar­ti­cles that had dam­aged the char­ac­ter of not on­ly him­self, but his fam­i­ly, and pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion against such re­ports did not "sub­tract the dam­age al­ready done and the pur­pose served by those who choose to de­stroy any­one's name."

The state­ment was a re­sponse to writ­ten ques­tions put to him by Ex­press in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter Cami­ni Mara­jh, which dealt with is­sues that in­clud­ed Fi­fa, the Caribbean Foot­ball Union, the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence and the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion."If I choose to an­swer any one of your ques­tions, wrapped with­in your own ex­pres­sion of opin­ions and false judg­ment, what I would be do­ing is val­i­dat­ing char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion pos­ing as in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism," Warn­er fired back.

"If one is asked a ques­tion on mat­ters that nev­er re­al­ly ex­ist­ed in re­al­i­ty and it is de­nied, the head­lines then scream 'Jack Warn­er de­nies X' which sim­ply places the fab­ri­ca­tion out there and achieves the as­sas­sin's true ob­jec­tive," the min­is­ter con­tin­ued.

While agree­ing that pub­lic of­fi­cials like him­self should be held ac­count­able, he asked: "Shouldn't there be equal ac­count­abil­i­ty by any mem­ber of the me­dia and the me­dia house rep­re­sent­ed? Who in­ves­ti­gates the back­ground and agen­da of the au­thor of the in­ves­tiga­tive piece when bias is al­leged by the hap­less vic­tim of any con­trived sto­ry?

"The right of you or any­one else to ask a ques­tion should be equal­ly weighed by my own right to ques­tion the true in­tent of the re­porter and the me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ed. My oblig­a­tion to an­swer your ques­tions for an ar­ti­cle which I am ad­vised will ap­pear in your pa­per this Sun­day must be equal­ly met by your own du­ti­ful oblig­a­tion and that of your pa­per to be fair, un­bi­ased, bal­anced and pro­fes­sion­al. In the ab­sence of that I am re­leased from my own du­ty to pro­vide any re­spons­es to your many ques­tions," Warn­er said.

At a pub­lic meet­ing two weeks ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to rogue el­e­ments in the me­dia.