Geisha Kow­lessar

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants no apol­o­gy from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. In­stead, Row­ley said yes­ter­day he would be leav­ing Warn­er "up to the peo­ple to let them de­cide." Row­ley made the com­ments in re­sponse to state­ments by Warn­er, who said crim­i­nal el­e­ments were work­ing with the PNM in a bid to throw him out of of­fice. "I want no apol­o­gy from Jack Warn­er. I would leave the peo­ple to de­cide about Jack Warn­er," He added. Warn­er was speak­ing dur­ing a town meet­ing at Warn­er Vil­lage, Char­lieville in his Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy. He al­so said there were peo­ple at the top lev­el in­volved in the il­le­gal guns and drug trade and the im­por­ta­tion of sex slaves. De­scrib­ing Warn­er's state­ments as a vul­gar­i­ty and an at­tempt to char­ac­ter-as­sas­si­nate the PNM, Row­ley said the con­duct of Warn­er al­so brought the coun­try in­to ques­tion.

He said: "This is a very se­ri­ous and dam­ag­ing state­ment and it is with­out any ba­sis. This state­ment is com­ing from an of­fice hold­er of Gov­ern­ment and it is dam­ag­ing to this coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age. "In the same way, when the Prime Min­is­ter said there was an as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on her life and it turned out that was not true...it was a farce. That al­so made in­ter­na­tion­al news. So it's the same thing from Jack Warn­er." Charg­ing that Warn­er was en­gag­ing in noth­ing but naked slan­der, Row­ley added that Warn­er had se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer. He added: "I will dis­re­gard Mr Warn­er's state­ments in the con­text that it is so pre­pos­ter­ous it is a vul­gar­i­ty.

"The dam­age is not for me and the PNM but for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and they need to see what is tak­ing place. "I don't ex­pect Jack Warn­er to en­dorse me or the PNM, but as a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter he should have some ethics," Row­ley added. He said if Warn­er had per­son­al­ly at­tacked him he would not hes­i­tate to take him to court.

Warn­er al­so was crit­i­cised for fail­ing to re­veal a crime plan as promised sev­er­al weeks ago. "Mr Warn­er spent six years in Op­po­si­tion de­mand­ing a crime plan from Mar­tin Joseph and from Howard Chin Lee, and all of a sud­den he has no crime plan and he is try­ing to el­e­vate him­self as this big crime-fight­er," Row­ley said. Warn­er's state­ments al­so ig­nit­ed the fury of oth­er Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, some of whom de­mand­ed an im­me­di­ate apol­o­gy. Brand­ing the com­ments as "ab­solute­ly pre­pos­ter­ous," Browne said cit­i­zens de­served bet­ter from a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter. "Mr Warn­er clear­ly has not brought the right type of think­ing in­to his po­si­tion and his off-the-cuff re­marks are not just slan­der­ous but dam­ag­ing to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the of­fice of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty," he added. Op­po­si­tion Whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald al­so ques­tioned Warn­er's rea­sons for mak­ing such com­ments. "Some­times I won­der if he thinks about what he is say­ing be­fore he ac­tu­al­ly says it. I have nev­er heard where the PNM is as­so­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nals... we are law-abid­ing cit­i­zens in the PNM and I want Mr Warn­er to know that."