Warner: Emperor Manning listens to no one
Jack Warner
At the meeting
Warner trained his guns on Manning
Stephen Cadiz made first appearance on UNC platform
Persad-Bissessar, Wade Mark and Tim Gopeesingh absent.
BY GAIL ALEXANDER
UNC deputy political leader Jack Warner last night lashed out at Prime Minister Patrick Manning, taking Manning to task on issues from crime to commodity prices.
Warner said Manning was distanced from real life in T&T.
“Emperor Manning does not listen to anyone, including his special advisors and Cabinet ministers,” Warner added at last night’s UNC’s Talk Back Forum in Chaguanas.
New UNC Alliance partner Stephen Cadiz made his first appearance on the UNC platform of allied parties at the meeting.
Last week Manning had deemed as “dotish”, statements by Warner about UNC deputy and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
This concerned Warner’s letter last week to UNC CEO Dr Tim Gopeesingh expressing concern about possible negative fallout for the party from the recent heavy publicising of Persad-Bissessar’s cancer scare. UNC deputy leader Wade Mark had accompanied Bissessar during her recent tests for this.
Persad-Bissessar subsequently said she had received preliminary positive results and was awaiting a final position. This is expected this week.
Persad-Bissessar, Gopeesingh and Mark were not among speakers at last night’s UNC meeting and Warner made no mention of the internal issue with Bissessar.
However, he trained his guns on Manning. Criticising the Government’s performance on crime and its initiatives, Warner said:
“It is always a knee-jerk response—a late reaction to the problem and almost invariably the result reflects the lack of study and understanding of the environment in which the solution is supposed to bring relief.”
Deeming the recent Golden Grove jail break a “Keystone Cops” affair, Warner added:
“What this tells us is that the entire infrastructure has collapsed and Emperor Manning and his useless cronies are quite content to live a pretentious existence, as they are shielded from the effects of their own incompetence.
“While the Emperor was atop the Customs high-rise building in Port-of-Spain last week, preening and braying to the media about his interpretation of development, at street level, women with babies in strollers were trying to negotiate broken sidewalks, gaping holes where manhole covers should be and negotiating around the stink created by unattended garbage.”
Warner said Manning’s distance from the people was startling.
He said: “He can spend $150 million for a new home and look down upon the still growing number of homeless. He can put the coat of arms on his vehicles, get the outriders to turn on their sirens, and disregard the traffic jams experienced by the rest of us.
“He wouldn’t notice that even rumshops and other places of relaxation are closing much earlier in the nation’s most bustling towns, making them ghost villages from sundown.”
Warner added: “Manning wouldn’t know and, I suspect, doesn’t care that merchants in places like Chaguanas are forced to close early too to avoid increasing the chance of banditry. In the capital recently, seven business places were broken into in as many weeks.
“He wouldn’t care—for sure— that farmers are having the roughest time in the history of agriculture. He would boast instead that closing down Caroni was the best decision he ever made, because what was sheer ignorance of this environment turned into arrogant neglect and now is approaching the level of hostility toward the people of this community.”
Warner said while citizens cannot afford raw materials to build homes Manning was blaming others for the rise in prices of aggregate.
“He sees a cartel where his own callous approach has engineered the condition. It is yet another demonstration of passing the proverbial buck, blaming others for his own ineptitude,” Warner added.
“Last year, when you farmers were distressed by flooding and lost whole crops, government said you jacked up prices of the salvaged crop and helped increase inflation. Now it is the same people he gave quarrying licences who have formed the supposed cartel to push up the cost of construction materials.”
Warner said: “Manning is suddenly invincible but only because the people allow him to be—you can change that. Only you, in fact, can put him in his place by voting for the UNC.”
Warner praised Chaguanas Mayor Suruj Rambachan who chaired the meeting. Rambachan, back from medical treatment overseas last week said in Saturday’s Public affairs column that he now has to shelve heavy political duties due to medical concerns
Kamla, Tim, Wade Absent
UNC deputies Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Wade Mark and UNC CEO Dr Tim Gopeesingh did not speak at last night’s UNC’s meeting since the UNC is now variating its speakers to allow new faces on the platform, they all said yesterday.
Speakers were YesTT’s Stephen Cadiz—now in the UNC Alliance—UNC leader Basdeo Panday, UNC MP Kelvin Ramnath, Senator Jennifer Kernahan Jones and (chairman) Suruj Rambachan.
Yesterday Persad-Bissessar said she was not scheduled to speak at the Chaguanas meeting:
“I speak from time to time, I wasn’t scheduled to speak this Monday. We work out our speakers each week and we have a consensus with respect to who speaks where—so it’s not an unusual situation,” Bissessar added.
Gopeesingh said: “We’re trying to rotate and variate speakers to bring out new people including from the new UNC Alliance and also since we’ve found our meetings were too long.
“Mr Panday had been asking us for some time to go for variation and we’ve now started to bring on new speakers in including youth speakers and those from the Alliance like Steve Cadiz who was scheduled to speak in Chaguanas.”
Mark said: “We have to have new speakers now since we have an alliance with other parties. Some of us speak in Parliament all the time so we have to give other people a chance.”
Chairman of last night’s meeting Chaguanas Mayor Suruj Rambachan said the list of speakers for each meeting was worked out by UNC’s National Executive by consensus:
“We have to start making some adjustments since we now have an alliance. Stephen Cadiz’s first appearance on the UNC platform was at the Chaguanas meeting for example,” Rambachan added.
©2005-2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited
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