Yvonne Ba­boolal

The res­ig­na­tion of for­mer Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was in the high­est tra­di­tion of the West­min­ster mod­el, leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness in the House Gan­ga Singh says.Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion is part of the po­lit­i­cal tra­di­tion in­her­it­ed by T&T, the Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources said. He said there were few res­ig­na­tions of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and Warn­er re­al­ly ought to be com­mend­ed for do­ing so.

Singh was field­ing ques­tions on Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion from the me­dia at the launch of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty's first Health Safe­ty and the En­vi­ron­ment (HSE) week at its head­quar­ters, Farm Road, St Joseph, on Mon­day.Asked how he and oth­er Gov­ern­ment MPs felt about Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion af­ter it was an­nounced last week he (Warn­er) had the sup­port of Cab­i­net min­is­ters, Singh said: "There were al­le­ga­tions (against Warn­er), some of which have been con­cre­tised in the Sim­mons' re­port.

"The find­ings in the Sim­mons re­port got a lot of at­ten­tion and there were con­cerns in the Gov­ern­ment. Warn­er recog­nised that and de­cid­ed to act. He ought to be re­al­ly com­mend­ed for this move."Re­spond­ing to ques­tions sur­round­ing the many calls for Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion Singh said: "They (the calls) were based on al­le­ga­tions. There was no con­crete find­ing (at the time)."It was on­ly with the find­ings of the Sim­mons' re­port that the Prime Min­is­ter act­ed in a de­lib­er­ate man­ner."

Asked what was the way for­ward for the Gov­ern­ment now, Singh added: "Warn­er was a hard­work­ing, cen­tral fig­ure in the Gov­ern­ment. He was al­so chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress."He has been a folk fig­ure in T&T for quite a while by virtue of his in­ter­na­tion­al ex­ploits in FI­FA but a gov­ern­ment is in a con­tin­u­um."

Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, present at the func­tion, said she sup­port­ed the po­si­tion of the leader of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness and her gov­ern­ment col­leagues on the Warn­er mat­ter.