Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

De­ci­sions from the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (Nalis) to with­draw its per­mis­sion to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for its man­i­festo launch at Nalis' Port-of-Spain branch this morn­ing has been de­scribed as an act of sab­o­tage by UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er.

Warn­er said it ap­peared to be a ma­li­cious act for Nalis to give the UNC no­tice that it would no longer be able to use the fa­cil­i­ty, less than 24-hours be­fore the UNC was sched­uled to launch its man­i­festo in one of the li­brary's Au­dio Vi­su­al Rooms. "It is sab­o­tage. It is sab­o­tage. But they will not suc­ceed," Warn­er said, dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Trinidad Guardian yes­ter­day. "It is de­lib­er­ate. It is an at­tempt to frus­trate us and it sparks of vin­dic­tive­ness, al­right? But I re­peat, that will not pre­vent the PNM from be­ing thrown out of of­fice. Peo­ple will vote them out. All this has done, as far as I am con­cerned, is ex­ac­er­bate the sit­u­a­tion." Warn­er said the UNC would be shift­ing the launch of its man­i­festo to the Ken Galt Hall at the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya at 10.30 am to­day.

"We are work­ing all (Thurs­day) night tonight for us to get the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence ready for the man­i­festo launch...And out of evil will come good be­cause you will have a man­i­festo launch that is un­par­al­lel," Warn­er said. Warn­er raised con­cerns that pow­er seemed to be abused in giv­ing the UNC a late no­ti­fi­ca­tion that it would no longer be able to use Nalis' fa­cil­i­ty.

Warn­er al­so said at last night's UNC pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas that thou­sands of dol­lars were paid to use Nalis' fa­cil­i­ties. "When you take my cheque you did not know that (the UNC would be un­able to use the fa­cil­i­ties)?" Warn­er asked. He added in his in­ter­view with the Trinidad Guardian that the move was one that ap­peared to be aimed at dis­rupt­ing and hin­der­ing the UNC's man­i­festo launch.

"It is an abuse of pow­er. But I say, my grand­moth­er has al­ways told me: 'noth­ing lasts for­ev­er.' So this abuse of pow­er will come to an end on May 24. It will come to an end on May 24," Warn­er said. He stressed that the act was one that was cal­cu­lat­ed to frus­trate the UNC's cam­paign for the May 24 elec­tion, which would be held in ten days. "For me, it is shock­ing. It re­minds me of their re­fusal of Bernie Camp­bell to come in­to the coun­try and hav­ing to apol­o­gise for it lat­er," Warn­er said. "Ob­vi­ous­ly, this is an at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to try and frus­trate the work of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and they will not suc­ceed." He em­pha­sised that the UNC would not have al­lowed Nalis' de­ci­sion to hold back the UNC from pre­sent­ing its man­i­festo to the pop­u­la­tion. "We have de­cid­ed to move to an­oth­er lo­ca­tion at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, but if we did not get there–but thank God we have got it–but if we did not get there and we had to go to the Sa­van­nah or a pub­lic park, we would have done that," Warn­er said. "At the end of the day, the Gov­ern­ment can do what they want, but the Gov­ern­ment can­not hold back the change that is tak­ing place with­in the coun­try and it is just a mat­ter of time."

In a three-para­graph press re­lease is­sued af­ter 4 pm yes­ter­day, Nalis pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Deb­bie Good­man wrote that "the with­draw­al of the use of the Au­dio Vi­su­al Room is in keep­ing with the es­tab­lished prin­ci­ple on the use of gov­ern­ment build­ings, dur­ing an elec­tion pe­ri­od (be­tween nom­i­na­tion day and elec­tion day)." She al­so said that the time in­di­cat­ed for the event would "se­vere­ly dis­rupt the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the li­brary and the of­fices in the Na­tion­al Li­brary build­ing. "We wish to in­form you that your re­quest to host a me­dia con­fer­ence to launch the man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship can­not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at this time," the re­lease said. "Any in­con­ve­nience caused is re­gret­ted in the cir­cum­stances." Re­peat­ed calls to In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal went unan­swered yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Parsan­lal was the Min­is­ter who held the port­fo­lio for Nalis.