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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Ch­agua­nas West By-Elec­tion

Jack critical of Kamla's spending, appointments

by

20130719

Jack Warn­er launched his fiercest at­tack to date on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment last night, call­ing for in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the PM's Christ­mas Fund, the Chil­dren's Life Fund, a min­is­ter's pur­chase of a house in Hamil­ton, Cana­da at a cost of Can$800,000 and the pur­chase of a BMW by the same min­is­ter for his daugh­ter to at­tend Mac­Mas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty.

He said the broth­er of the same "ca­bal min­is­ter" was un­em­ployed in 2010 and to­day "is a big con­trac­tor in T&T, build­ing play parks all over the coun­try at ridicu­lous­ly in­flat­ed prices."Warn­er, while vow­ing not do any­thing to bring down the Gov­ern­ment, al­so spoke about al­leged fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' can­di­date for the Ju­ly 29 by-elec­tion in Ch­agua­nas West, Khadi­jah Ameen.

Warn­er al­so dis­played a pur­port­ed pic­ture of Ameen "play­ing with mon­ey" dur­ing his pub­lic meet­ing at Marchin Recre­ation Ground, Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion, Cunu­pia. In it Ameen and an­oth­er woman ap­peared to be hold­ing $100 bills and sit­ting be­hind a birth­day cake sur­round­ed by more $100 bills."This lit­tle girl is play­ing hokey-pokey with peo­ple's mon­ey as if it were Mo­nop­oly [mon­ey]," he said.

Warn­er said he knew where the mon­ey was com­ing from, but, un­like the PM, he re­fused to sanc­tion it.He al­so said he had 13 oth­er pic­tures, which were "most sor­did."The for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter said he want­ed to know where the mon­ey col­lect­ed for the Christ­mas Fund had gone claim­ing one busi­ness­man had con­tributed over $27 mil­lion to it. This mat­ter should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, he said, along with an al­leged do­na­tion of $5 mil­lion from a for­mer chair­man of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to the Chil­dren's Life Fund.

He crit­i­cised the PM for call­ing him a la­ga­hoo.Warn­er al­so said the treat­ment of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple with­in the part­ner­ship would af­fect the Gov­ern­ment neg­a­tive­ly. It was un­fair to ap­point Mar­lene Coudray as a full min­is­ter, he charged, while Ari­ma MP Rodger Samuel is mere­ly a min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

The for­mer UNC chair­man said in 2010, Samuel "fought a bruis­ing elec­tion and against all odds he won."He want­ed to know how Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan could hold two mega-min­istries while "none could be found for Samuels."Warn­er al­so asked how port­fo­lios could have been found for min­is­ters Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, Gan­ga Singh and De­vant Ma­haraj while none was giv­en to Samuel.

"This smacks of in­equity of bias and is wrong," Warn­er said. "It is ac­tions like these, re­gard­less of what the COP lead­er­ship is say­ing that are tear­ing the COP mem­ber­ship apart."He said to keep the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in­tact, "All par­ties with­in the part­ner­ship must be treat­ed as equal."Warn­er said that point was not un­der­stood by Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Lin­coln Dou­glas, who said, "Who want to go could go." Warn­er said Dou­glas "will pay a price for that fool­ish state­ment soon­er rather than lat­er."

He de­scribed his by-elec­tion ri­val Ameen as "the ca­bal's sac­ri­fi­cial lamb."Ameen is the for­mer chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion. Warn­er said an au­dit done by an in­ter­nal au­di­tor on the cor­po­ra­tion showed there had been du­pli­ca­tion of vouch­ers and doc­u­ments iden­ti­fy­ing ex­pen­di­ture not record­ed on month­ly state­ments.Ameen's dri­ver, he claimed, was gross­ly over­paid.

Claim­ing the cor­po­ra­tion's Chair­man's Spe­cial Fund Ac­count "seems to be a slush fund," he want­ed to know why the fund had not been sub­ject­ed to an au­dit from Oc­to­ber 2011 to the present. He said casi­nos were mak­ing large con­tri­bu­tions to that fund.Ques­tion­able con­tracts, he claimed, were be­ing of­fered to SIS con­trac­tors.

Warn­er al­so called on the PM to "ac­count for the $27 mil­lion which Cab­i­net ap­proved to be spent on a one-night con­cert on Au­gust 31 at the Queen's Park Oval dur­ing the 50th An­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence last year."Warn­er told Per­sad-Bisses­sar he would "not re­mind the pub­lic of the $300,000 your em­ploy­ee lost pri­or to the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions in a car dri­ven by one of your dri­vers af­ter it left the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence."He said he did not want to speak about how many "more cars left with mon­ey."


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