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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Warner not taking ILP into PP

by

20130801

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan says it's sad that re-elect­ed Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er does not want to work with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.Ram­bachan was speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing an Eman­ci­pa­tion Day pa­rade and cul­tur­al ral­ly in his Tabaquite con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day.Asked to com­ment on the PP's crush­ing de­feat in Mon­day's by-elec­tion by Warn­er, who won by a land­slide un­der his new­ly-formed In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), Ram­bachan said: "The peo­ple have spo­ken and we ac­cept that."Warn­er re­ceived 12,642 votes to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Khadi­jah Ameen's 5,129 in Mon­day's elec­tion.Sev­er­al PP coali­tion mem­bers, in­clud­ing Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, have since called for an ur­gent meet­ing to dis­cuss the heavy de­feat and how the PP would re­spond.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ram­bachan, who is al­so the Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter, said there was noth­ing to re­cov­er from."What it is we have to do is to build our con­stituen­cy, lis­ten to the peo­ple and see what it is we need to do in or­der to make them hap­py," he said."I don't think the peo­ple are against the UNC. I think the peo­ple want a high­er lev­el of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and maybe what we have to do, while we have done hun­dreds and hun­dreds of projects, we have not com­mu­ni­cat­ed ful­ly to the peo­ple the ex­tent of work that we have done."Asked if the PP was will­ing to work with Warn­er, he said, "Mr Warn­er has said in the last two days that he is no longer pre­pared to work with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship."That is a sad thing be­cause he promised the peo­ple of Fe­lic­i­ty and Ch­agua­nas West that he was go­ing to go and ap­ply to the Part­ner­ship and so on and now he has de­fined his ter­ri­to­ry, which ex­cludes the PP."Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of join­ing with the PP on his of­fi­cial Face­book page yes­ter­day, Warn­er said: "There is not much hope."An analy­sis of what the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has mor­phed in­to sug­gests to us that the on­ly com­mon ground we share is that we are both in op­po­si­tion to the PNM but that is all."Based on what is be­ing prac­tised by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to­day, our vi­sions for Trinidad and To­ba­go are dif­fer­ent from theirs; our mis­sions are miles apart."

Warn­er al­so made sim­i­lar com­ments dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, in which he said the ILP mem­ber­ship did not want him to join the Part­ner­ship.Ram­bachan al­so com­ment­ed on the man­ner in which Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona had dis­missed four sen­a­tors, re­plac­ing them with four new sen­a­tors, say­ing: "The Pres­i­dent is free to ap­point his sen­a­tors and one must al­so re­spect that. That is part of democ­ra­cy."As for his Eman­ci­pa­tion mes­sage, he said it was a sim­ple one."Let's cel­e­brate the work of our an­ces­tors who have brought us to this lev­el of free­dom and democ­ra­cy and al­so it gives us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to build strong spir­i­tu­al val­ues. With­out this we would not have been where we are to­day."The ral­ly, held by Ram­bachan in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nep­tune School of Arts, be­gan at Caratal Road and end­ed at Gas­par­il­lo Junc­tion where a cul­tur­al show was held.


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