Interim ILP leader Jack Warner, who says he “worked his butt off” for the UNC, has taken Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to task for her claim that he is in league with the Opposition PNM. Warner slammed the PM and other members of her Cabinet—and his Chaguanas West opponent Khadijah Ameen— during last night’s ILP meeting at New Settlement. He issued his speech to the media yesterday ahead of delivery.
Warner said: “We are just six days away from the Promised Land. All the polls suggest we have made it against all odds... yet now is not the time to be lured into a state of complacency... to sit back and relax and think our work is over. Now is the time, if the polls are correct, for us to work harder.” He said last week another private poll showed him with a 60.5 per cent lead and last evening another showed him ahead by 75 per cent.
Following the PM’s claims Warner and PNM leader Keith Rowley were “Batman and Robin” attacking the PP, Warner said: “In the absence of anything sensible to say, it has been said that I am working with the PNM. I do not believe I should dignify that statement with any response except to say all my life I have never been a PNM.
“When I entered Parliament as your representative in 2007 up to when I departed a few months ago, Rowley has been my most consistent and vocal critic and today the Prime Minister is saying I am working with the PNM. Since when did you know this, Prime Minister, since when?” He added: “Am I not the first person you appointed to act as Prime Minister when you had to leave the country?
“Am I not the same person whom you appointed to act for you on four occasions subsequently? Madam Prime Minister, are you really telling this nation you appointed a PNM to act for you as Prime Minister on five occasions? “Prime Minister, I know of a pundit who had campaigned vigorously for the PNM in their last election. Today he is your friend, Prime Minister... who is the PNM, Prime Minister? Me?
“There are ministers in your government, Prime Minister, who at one time or the other were members of the PNM. One of them was even on five PNM state boards and even received a Chaconia Medal, Gold. “I was never on any PNM board in all my life Prime Minister, nor have I ever received any medal of any kind from the PNM. And you call me PNM, Prime Minister?” Warner alleged the Prime Minister’s present advertising company was the PNM’s advertising company in the last election.
He added: “And Prime Minister, you call me a PNM? In the 18/18 campaign it was I who worked to get 18 seats for the UNC in the 2002 election campaign. Warner said the “UNC-led cabal, nothing like the UNC we all knew under Basdeo Panday,” had launched an attack against him with untruths. “This isn’t the UNC we knew. This isn’t the UNC, the honourable party that emerged out of the strong leadership of Club 88 and Basdeo Panday,” Warner said.
He used the Rev Daniel Teelucksingh’s recent statements on the election climate to support his own claim that Government did not know Chaguanas West existed before the by-election was called. Criticising government minister Bhoe Tewarie and UNC by-election candidate Khadijah Ameen, Warner said Rambachan had not spoken on the platform “because he is afraid of being exposed by me. I have the facts but here and now isn’t the place for that.”