Richard Lord

Mak­ing it clear that no one con­trols her, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sat­ur­day night re­ject­ed the con­tention of for­mer min­is­ter Jack Warn­er that some mem­bers of the Cab­i­net in­flu­enced her to ac­cept his res­ig­na­tion.She made this clear dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on her re­turn from an of­fi­cial vis­it to Cana­da.

Many peo­ple in T&T say she was "con­trolled by Mr Warn­er," the Prime Min­is­ter said."I don't know if it is be­cause I am a woman and peo­ple think that I am weak or some­thing, so I was con­trolled by Mr Warn­er and I was his pup­pet, and now they say I am con­trolled by some oth­er per­sons," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said."I want to make it very clear, the on­ly peo­ple who con­trol me are those who be­long to the elec­torate, the cit­i­zen­ry of T&T, no one else."

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on Fri­day's res­ig­na­tion of Warn­er as MP, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she ac­cept­ed his res­ig­na­tion based on the find­ings of the Sir David Sim­mons-led Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that re­port in­flu­enced her to ac­cept Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter's a week ago.She al­so said Warn­er's claim that her de­ci­sion to ac­cept his res­ig­na­tion was in­flu­enced by cer­tain min­is­ters was not true and that he was con­tra­dict­ing him­self.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she read in the news­pa­pers "where Warn­er says that he vol­un­tar­i­ly re­signed, but on the oth­er hand he is say­ing that some min­is­ters forced me, made me ac­cept the res­ig­na­tion."She said his claim was "an oxy­moron be­cause you can­not have (say) that you vol­un­tar­i­ly did this and then ac­cuse min­is­ters of in­flu­enc­ing my mind as to what is to be done."

The Sim­mons re­port, de­liv­ered at the re­cent Con­ca­caf con­gress in Pana­ma, con­clud­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion's for­mer lead­ers, Warn­er and for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary Charles "Chuck" Blaz­er, were "fraud­u­lent in their man­age­ment" of the body. The re­port not­ed that Warn­er had failed to dis­close that the US$25.9 mil­lion (�17m) Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence was built on his land, while Blaz­er re­ceived US$20 mil­lion (�13.3m) from Con­ca­caf.

Warn­er had claimed the re­sponse from both with­in and out­side the par­ty in the wake of the re­port led to his ul­ti­mate res­ig­na­tion.On Sat­ur­day, the PM al­so con­firmed that last week Sun­day was not the first time Warn­er had of­fered his res­ig­na­tion. She said he al­so did so short­ly af­ter a Reuters re­port claimed he was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the FBI and IRS and that his son was co-op­er­at­ing with US au­thor­i­ties in the probe. She said she ad­vised Warn­er then to re­spond to the re­port.

"He did so then and he said he is will­ing to re­sign from any or all of those po­si­tions. At that time I did not ac­cept his res­ig­na­tion be­cause I still held the view that I could not act on news­pa­per al­le­ga­tions," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Asked if her dis­cus­sion with a US of­fi­cial in Wash­ing­ton days af­ter that in­ci­dent in­flu­enced her de­ci­sion to ac­cept Warn­er's lat­est res­ig­na­tion, she said: "What hap­pened there­after, what was dif­fer­ent to two weeks ago to last Sun­day when I ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion, was the re­port by a very em­i­nent ju­rist (Sir David Sim­mons, chair­man of the Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee).

"So this was no longer a news­pa­per re­port, an opin­ion of jour­nal­ists, not that I have any­thing against those, but every Mon­day morn­ing some­body makes an al­le­ga­tion...do I then fire a min­is­ter, ask­ing him to step down. We don't op­er­ate like that."I don't think any Gov­ern­ment can op­er­ate like that be­cause al­le­ga­tions do not rep­re­sent what may be the re­al­i­ty."

She added: "It was the re­port pre­sent­ed by for­mer (Bar­ba­dos) Chief Jus­tice Sim­mons and oth­ers who put their re­port for­ward and I felt in all of the cir­cum­stances I would want to ac­cept that of­fer of res­ig­na­tion. That is what changed in that pe­ri­od of time."The PM said she felt Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion now of­fered him an op­por­tu­ni­ty "to clear his name."

She said she al­so did not "un­der­stand why when Sir David Sim­mons was do­ing his in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Mr Warn­er did not put out his side of the sto­ry, be­cause I read in the re­port that he did not co-op­er­ate and I was con­cerned about that.""Why? Why didn't he?" she asked of Warn­er's re­fusal to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions be­fore the com­mis­sion.

"If he had fur­ther in­for­ma­tion that was dif­fer­ent, I found it a lit­tle sur­pris­ing that he did not use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to put those for­ward and per­haps now he has a lit­tle more time in which he could put his case on his side to these mat­ters in the pub­lic do­main."

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Asked if she would al­so al­low Warn­er to con­test the forth­com­ing by-elec­tion on a UNC tick­et as he de­sires to, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the for­mer min­is­ter will have to go through the nor­mal par­ty process. She said she was not pre­pared to say more on the mat­ter, adding the par­ty will de­cide on it in due course.

"It is not on­ly an is­sue about the seat, be­cause we all know Mr Warn­er has been a very good MP but there were oth­er is­sues which came in­to the pot and in­to the mix and those still re­main not yet dealt with and still out­stand­ing and swirling around. So we see the way for­ward and put God in front and do what is right," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was met at the air­port by Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, who act­ed in her ab­sence, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Works and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and oth­ers.