Independent Liberal Party (ILP) leader Jack Warner says government’s term in office should be shortened. “With all the talk of constitutional reform, I am beginning to seriously wonder if we should not have a government of four years instead of five years,” Warner said at an Emancipation Day luncheon on Sunday at the Passage to Asia restaurant, Chaguanas. He said that would ensure citizens could “get rid of them (government) quickly” for non-performance in office. “Because the way they going, five years is too long,” he said, referring to his former colleagues in the People’s Partnership Government.
Warner asked the crowd to reflect on the government from the time of Dr Eric Williams to the present Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar regime, and say whether there has ever been a time they wished a government to remain in power for a longer period of time. “And if we cannot find that point in time, then something has to be wrong,” he said. He said there was a new type of bondage in T&T, a bondage of silence, where citizens were afraid to speak out about corruption and nepotism in the government for fear of victimisation. He said those people who sit on the fence were not truly liberated. “If when you sit down you turn a blind eye to what is happening in the country, you are not emancipated,” he added.
Warner said T&T had to be emancipated at every level, especially at the political level. He said Chaguanas West exemplified political emancipation at last Monday’s highly contested by-election, where Warner, under the ILP ticket, won by a landslide against the incumbent ruling party for the constituency, the United National Congress (UNC). He said the time was coming when the attitude of Chaguanas West would be spread to the rest of the country. In light of the spate of murders that took place over the weekend, Warner asked the audience if nine murders in the space of two days truly represented freedom.
He said the country should ask itself if it was better off than it was three, five or ten years ago. “If we are not, where will be 20 years from now?” he asked. He said Chaguanas West must feel free every day and so become the beacon of change that was voted for on July 29. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Warner touched on constitutional reform for campaign financing, saying: “When we came into government, no more than three or four ministers were ministers of means. “Today, that is not the case. About ten of them are ministers of means. Where they get the money from? Everybody knows but nobody wants to bell the cat,” he said.