For­mer UNC min­is­ter and MP Jack Warn­er says he had ex­pect­ed Re­pub­li­can can­di­date, now Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, to win Tues­day’s US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Warn­er, who con­sid­ers him­self a friend of Trump for over 15 years, had owned a pent­house in Trump Tow­er op­po­site Trump’s own pent­house.

Yes­ter­day, he said of Trump’s vic­to­ry, “A man who has over 30 crim­i­nal charges and been im­peached twice, a man who has been ha­rassed and been ridiculed in the worst pos­si­ble way, and a man who is a con­vict­ed felon has been elect­ed to the high­est of­fice in the Unit­ed States. All I can say is that the peo­ple have spo­ken.

“T&T, which is a speck of dust in the world of pol­i­tics, may think oth­er­wise, but the Amer­i­cans have spo­ken. And we have to re­spect their wish­es.” 

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith sent a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage to Trump yes­ter­day.

In it, he stat­ed, “Your elec­tion em­pha­sis­es the pow­er of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­toral process where cit­i­zens are em­pow­ered to par­tic­i­pate and make de­ci­sions with a shared sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for shap­ing their own fu­ture.”

Grif­fith al­so told Trump, as he pre­pared to take of­fice soon and be­gan to roll out the names of his ap­point­ments to var­i­ous port­fo­lios, that he looked for­ward to wel­com­ing and meet­ing Trump’s am­bas­sador to T&T “to en­gage in the fur­ther­ance of shared se­cu­ri­ty dis­cus­sions as was un­der­tak­en with the late am­bas­sador (Joseph) Mon­del­lo.”

HOPE chair­man Steve Al­varez, com­ment­ing on Trump’s vic­to­ry, said, “This demon­strates that when there is a void of strong lead­er­ship, that void is usu­al­ly filled by peo­ple who are de­ter­mined to lead.

“In T&T, there are many is­sues that re­quire strong, de­ci­sive lead­er­ship. Food se­cu­ri­ty is one of them. Per­haps the area that fur­ther demon­strates poor lead­er­ship is in the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the safe­ty of its cit­i­zens and jus­tice.

“There are oth­er ar­eas where one can see to­tal fail­ure to un­der­stand what pos­i­tive gov­er­nance means. The econ­o­my stands out as one of the ma­jor fail­ures. Find­ing al­ter­na­tive sources of for­eign ex­change out­side of the en­er­gy sec­tor must be a pri­or­i­ty. “

Al­varez added, “While T&T’s Gov­ern­ment is lack­ing the vi­sion and com­pe­ten­cy to im­prove T&T, the op­po­si­tion does not al­low for much hope. The faces of peo­ple ac­cused of poor gov­er­nance and cor­rup­tion among the op­po­si­tion bench­es don’t in­spire vot­ers to sup­port them and ar­rive at the changes re­quired for progress. It’s up to cit­i­zens to seek new lead­er­ship, new per­son­nel, peo­ple with in­no­v­a­tive ideas for re­build­ing a na­tion, and more im­por­tant­ly, strong lead­er­ship.”