Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Pre­dict­ing that so­cial up­heaval sim­i­lar to what oc­curred in Beetham Gar­dens will soon break out through­out T&T, Jack Warn­er says ur­gent ac­tion is need­ed to deal with crime.Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter open­ing an of­fice at South­ern Main Road, Cunu­pia, on Mon­day, Warn­er said he was not sur­prised by the protests which ex­plod­ed at Beetham on Sun­day and con­tin­ued in­to Mon­day in re­sponse to the po­lice shoot­ing of Christo­pher Greaves.Warn­er is in­ter­im leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty.

Greaves, 23, of Fifth Street, Beetham, was shot on Sun­day while walk­ing to a par­lour.The po­lice, who were on pa­trol in the area, claimed he was armed and shot at them af­ter they chal­lenged him.How­ev­er, res­i­dents said he was un­armed and was at­tacked by the po­lice. The res­i­dents al­so claimed the po­lice did not al­low them to at­tend to Greaves as he re­mained on the ground af­ter be­ing shot.

Say­ing the mat­ter was not han­dled well on Mon­day, Warn­er said all politi­cians should stay out of Beetham and let an in­de­pen­dent per­son like act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams deal with it."We have be­come re­ac­tive rather than pro-ac­tive. Peo­ple be­lieve you have to run from Beetham and if you give the peo­ple mon­ey, fun and games, they will be OK. This is not so," Warn­er said.

"Beetham needs un­der­stand­ing, em­pa­thy, love and mu­tu­al re­spect. Politi­cians have done enough dam­age al­ready. Let oth­ers go in and get them to un­der­stand what is be­ing done."He added: "What is hap­pen­ing in Beetham will spread through­out the coun­try. There is a lot of anger, hurt, suf­fer­ing and pain. It has reached boil­ing point."

Asked whether any ben­e­fit would come out of the crime talks cur­rent­ly un­der way be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Warn­er said, "Noth­ing at all. That is all a gim­mick."Warn­er al­so said he had no in­ten­tions of turn­ing away St Joseph MP Her­bert Vol­ney, who has ex­pressed an in­ter­est in join­ing the ILP. He ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of de­stroy­ing Vol­ney's ca­reer.

"Vol­ney was used and abused and now they spit him out. We en­cour­aged Vol­ney to leave his job. Why is he the scape­goat?" Warn­er said.He said he, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan had wooed Vol­ney away from his "cushy job" as a judge and begged him to join the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Say­ing Vol­ney should not have been blamed for the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co, Warn­er said: "The Prime Min­is­ter chose to take Vol­ney as a scape­goat and to dam­age his ca­reer for­ev­er. Vol­ney is not to blame for Sec­tion 34, it is the en­tire gov­ern­ment to blame. It is the en­tire Par­lia­ment. Why is Vol­ney treat­ed with such dis­cour­tesy?"He said he planned to hold a meet­ing with ILP ex­ec­u­tives to dis­cuss Vol­ney's po­si­tion in the ILP.

"Vol­ney will not be turned away. This par­ty is an all-in­clu­sive par­ty. to this date we have not re­ject­ed a sin­gle ap­pli­ca­tion and I don't see why we should re­ject Vol­ney," Warn­er said.He added that he would work with Vol­ney to en­sure that the UNC nev­er re­tained the St Joseph seat again.

Mooni­lal speaks

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House Dr Roodal Mooni­lal crit­i­cised Warn­er for say­ing the Beetham protests will spread."I am sure he will like that to hap­pen in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try," Mooni­lal said."Warn­er is a re­mark­able char­ac­ter. All the prob­lems that he de­scribed ap­par­ent­ly hap­pened from Ju­ly 29, be­cause when he was in the Gov­ern­ment these were not prob­lems that he saw or even tried to fix.

He added, "Re­gret­tably, we have reached a stage where any time there is a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the po­lice, you usu­al­ly have a road block­age the next day. You don't have any protests when a gang­ster kills an­oth­er gang­ster, but you have this protest."Mooni­lal al­so com­mend­ed the po­lice and the De­fence Force for han­dling the Beetham cri­sis in a swift and ef­fec­tive way.