Geisha Kow­lessar

MSJ call for Warn­er to go

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is again call­ing for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly.Its leader, David Ab­du­lah, and a small group gath­ered at 10 am out­side Warn­er's of­fice, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, list­ing sev­er­al con­cerns and grounds they be­lieve why he should quit.Ab­du­lah first made the call on June 27, 2012, five days af­ter Warn­er's ap­point­ment as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Al­so present were Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union pres­i­dent, Joseph Re­my, and pres­i­dent of the Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan.Ab­du­lah re­called the de­mo­li­tion of High­way Re-Route Move­ment's camp which al­so oc­curred on June 27, 2012 in which Warn­er su­per­vised the po­lice and sol­diers.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter was again crit­i­cised by Ab­du­lah for in­struct­ing the po­lice not to re­veal crime sta­tis­tics when Warn­er spoke at a press con­fer­ence on Oc­to­ber 9, 2012.The lat­est in­ci­dent which in Warn­er act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, Ab­du­lah claimed, was in the han­dling of the Fly­ing Squad mat­ter in which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­mand­ed a full re­port.

Ab­du­lah said: "Since Mr Warn­er was ap­point­ed eight months ago, every six weeks or so there have been ex­am­ples of ac­tions, be­hav­iour and state­ments which are to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able for some­one hold­ing a very sen­si­tive of­fice of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.Asked who was his choice for a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ab­du­lah said that was up to the Prime Min­is­ter.

He added: "She will have to make that de­ci­sion and from there we will be able to com­ment on the suit­abil­i­ty of a re­place­ment but that is not what we are talk­ing about now. We are talk­ing about good gov­er­nance. This is a very crit­i­cal is­sue for us. That's why we left the Part­ner­ship last June."Asked why he be­lieved Warn­er would now heed his call to step down Ab­du­lah said there was a grow­ing body de­mand­ing his res­ig­na­tion.

"There is a grow­ing body of pub­lic opin­ion recog­nis­ing what we have been say­ing is cor­rect. You are see­ing many com­men­ta­tors in the press, many ed­i­to­ri­als and gen­er­al­ly pub­lic opin­ion," Ab­du­lah said.On whether Warn­er's in­abil­i­ty al­so re­sult­ed from the spi­ralling crime rate he could not give a de­ci­sive com­ment.He said: "I don't know if the crime sit­u­a­tion is feed­ing that opin­ion.

"Clear­ly if you have a min­is­ter who is pre­pared to do things out­side of a le­gal frame­work or be­ing in charge when you have some­thing like the Fly­ing Squad be­ing es­tab­lished... then it sends a sig­nal that per­sons who are re­spon­si­ble for up­hold­ing the law are pre­pared to con­done ac­tiv­i­ty out­side of the law then oth­er cit­i­zens can­not be held to ac­count and can­not be asked to op­er­ate with­in the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law."

If Warn­er did not re­sign, Ab­du­lah said, it was then up to cit­i­zens to judge and come to their own con­clu­sion.Cabr­era ac­knowl­edged that de­spite calls for Warn­er to re­sign he would not do so."But we are do­ing what oth­er peo­ple may be scared to do but want to do," he added.Echo­ing Cabr­era's sen­ti­ments, Re­my said the coun­try was in a cri­sis re­gard­ing lead­er­ship, adding: "May­hem is al­most on our doorstep."