Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says the coun­try has much to cel­e­brate. Warn­er made the com­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to state­ments made by po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah that it was "an in­ap­pro­pri­ate time for the Part­ner­ship to have a cel­e­bra­to­ry ral­ly at a time when there were so many cru­cial is­sues fac­ing the coun­try."

The Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter, ad­dress­ing the for­mal com­mis­sion­ing of a $9.6 mil­lion WASA pipeline in­stal­la­tion project in Ma­yaro, said: "I am in no way at all em­bar­rassed to ask you to­day to cel­e­brate, be­cause there are those, those prophets of doom and gloom, who want you to be­lieve you have no rea­son to cel­e­brate."

Ab­du­lah said he did not con­firm his at­ten­dance at the ral­ly which would be held Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas. He al­so did not con­firm whether he would speak. He al­so ob­ject­ed to his pho­to­graph which ap­peared on full page ads in news­pa­pers this week an­nounc­ing his at­ten­dance.

Warn­er, speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the com­mis­sion­ing, said: "I ap­proved the ad and all he has to do is write to me and tell me take off his pho­to and his lo­go and I will...He has not done that yet. "I am not go­ing to do any­thing about it," he added.

Warn­er al­so crit­i­cised Fix­in' T&T which, he said, was bent on "de­stroy­ing" T&T.

In a state­ment ear­li­er this week, Fix­in' T&T con­demned Warn­er's act­ing ap­point­ment as Prime Min­is­ter. It said Warn­er's act­ing ap­point­ment "again brings in­to ques­tion the judg­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar."