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Warner: No UNC councillors; term ended
Story Updated: Aug 9, 2013
Independent Liberal Party (ILP) leader Jack Warner yesterday said the local government council term ended in July so there were no legitimate councillors to call for a delay to the local government elections.
Warner was referring to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s statement that it was the United National Congress (UNC) councillors that called for a delay to the local government elections, constitutionally due by October.
“The Prime Minister had to be making a joke when she said that the UNC councillors called for the delay. The term ended, there are no councillors,” Warner said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He was referring to the July 26 end of the local government term.
“I think she meant to say UNC cabal call for the delay,” he said.
Warner threatened to hold a “mammoth” march if the Government decided to postpone local government elections beyond the time it is constitutionally due.
“The ILP will join with other groups and hold a massive march the likes of which this Government has never seen,” he said.
But Local Government Minister Dr Suruj Rambachan said while the term had ended last month and the councillors were officially out of office, they were still a “legitimate parliamentary arm” of the UNC.
“These are men and women who are still working and not getting paid at the corporations. They still have a say.”
Rambachan said these same councillors were re-presenting themselves for the forthcoming local government elections.
“The UNC has taken no decision to postpone elections, that is all conjecture, everything is mainly conjecture. The subject is being debated,” he said.
Valid reasons to postpone
Story Updated: Aug 12, 2013
Arima Mayor: Ghassan Youseph
Outgoing Arima Mayor Ghassan Youseph said yesterday there were valid reasons for the postponement of the local government elections.
Speaking to the Express, Youseph said in principle he was against any postponement of any election but a case could be made out for the postponement of this particular election.
Commenting on the possible postponement of the elections, Youseph noted that Minister of Local Government, Suruj Rambachan, said there was a White Paper on Local Government which is currently on the Cabinet table concerning a new law aimed at reforming local government.
The law would allow greater devolution of powers to local government bodies, Youseph said. He said that law would not be ready by October 26. “So what are you going to do? Call the local government election between now and October and then in six months when the law would be ready, you would call another election? Does that make sense?” he asked.
He noted, however, that this information should have been presented to the population before and the life of local government bodies should have been extended before July 26.
“There is merit in postponing the local government elections for the greater good of constitutional reform and giving more power to local government,” he said.
Youseph said one also had to bear in mind that the People’s Partnership manifesto called for a four-year term for local government bodies. The current term of office of local government bodies is three years.
The Arima Corporation is the only local government body that is controlled by the Congress of the People (COP). Six of its seven former councillors are COP and its mayor is COP. There is one PNM former councillor (former principal Anthony Garcia) on that corporation.
Youseph, however, denied that former councillors of the Arima Corporation had joined the Independent Liberal Party (ILP). He said only one former councillor - Clinton Jennings- had joined ILP. He said Jennings had told him about six months ago that he was not proposing to offer himself for re-selection as a councillor.
Youseph said he was shocked to see that Jennings had joined the ILP.
On the issue of Arima MP Rodger Samuel, Youseph said he had no comment.
Samuel, who several weeks ago told the COP National Council that he was thinking of resigning as a minister, has been fasting and praying for guidance on what he should do.
Youseph said he, too, has been meditating.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said last Friday that the former UNC councillors have asked that the local government elections be postponed in view of the party’s defeat at the Chaguanas West by-election.
The local government elections are constitutionally due by October 26. T
he Prime Minister, who has been critical of the PNM in the past for repeatedly postponing elections, had previously pledged to hold elections on time. She did confirm that the issue of local government reform was in the works with a White Paper now on the Cabinet desk.
On Sunday, Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal said the Government had taken no decision on the date of local government elections.
Both the People’s National Movement and the ILP are opposed to a postponement.
THE WHITE Paper on Local Government Reform — currently before Cabinet — recommends an increase in pay for all representatives, including mayors, as well as making such representatives full-time, sources say.
The proposals are contained in the document which is still being deliberated on by Cabinet.
The White Paper was drawn up after a series of public consultations on the question of local government reform carried out by the Ministry of Local Government earlier this year. If approved by the Cabinet it could be used as the basis to bring amendments to the Municipal Corporation Act.
Currently, mayors receive an honorarium of between $12,800 to $16,800 and their posts, as well as posts of all other local government officials, are not regarded as full-time.
The “Policy on Local Government Transformation and Modernisation” – released by the Ministry of Local Government this year – notes the proposal to change honoraria to salaries. The document proposes an amendment to Section 17 of the Act to specifically state “the salaries, allowances and other conditions of service of the mayor, deputy mayor, councillors, aldermen and other prescribed office-holders shall be determined by the SRC (Salaries Review Commission).”
It is understood that the level of local government officials honoraria has, in the past, been determined by the SRC, but there was no explicit provision in the Municipal Corporations Act which makes plain the SRC’s jurisdiction. As such, an amendment is expected in any proposed legislation.
It is also understood that the White Paper also calls for the question of the financing of local government bodies to be addressed. One issue that was raised during consultations was the question of the proportions of funds allocated to local government bodies. Some argued that the current arrangement did not adequately take into account the surface area of corporations, population needs and the extent of infrastructure in need of maintenance. It is understood that the White Paper recommends reform in this regard and calls for a mechanism to determine just how much money is given to a corporation.
In 2013, the Port-of-Spain City Corporation was allocated $192 million; San Fernando City Corporation $112 million; Arima Borough Corporation $63 million; Point Fortin Borough Corporation $55 million; Chaguanas Borough Corporation $75.9 million; Diego Martin Regional Corporation $77.3 million; San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation $134 million; Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation $154 million; Sangre Grande Regional Corporation $68 million; Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation $97.8 million; Mayaro/Rio Claro Regional Corporation $65 million; Siparia Regional Corporation $66 million; Penal/Debe Regional Corporation $59.7 million; Princes Town Regional Corporation $71 million.
Some have argued that this distribution does not factor in the demands of each corporation.
As reported last week by Newsday, another issue in the White Paper is a proposal for extending the terms of local government from three to four years.
Sources said no decision has been recorded yet on the White Paper and it is expected to return to Cabinet this week.
Warner accuses PP ministers of ‘sex ring’, dirty contracts
Story Updated: Aug 17, 2013
A government minister is being accused of running a “sex ring” at his ministry.
Another is said to be aware that the Government-run Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) contracts in east Trinidad were being sold, while a third is alleged to have handed out three lucrative contracts, without proper procurement procedure, to a company in which his daughter’s friend is one of the owners.
The allegations are the latest in a series by interim political leader of the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) Jack Warner against members of the People’s Partnership Government.
Speaking at an ILP meeting at the Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande last night, Warner told supporters that the PP government had become “power hungry” and “vulgar”.
Warner slammed one minister for running what he called a “sex ring” at the ministry, where he alleged, “Employees are forced to have sex for favours.”
“I have names and places and dates of the persons involved,” he said adding that when one of the employees complained about the matter, she was fired.
Warner also alleged that another minister was using his office to benefit friends and family.
He said three contracts were given to a friend of the minister’s daughter without proper procedure being followed.
He said he even had evidence about the country’s youngest ever holder of a diplomatic passport was.
But he added, “Tonight is not for that.”
DARYLL DUCKS IN
Story Updated: Aug 22, 2013
visiting T&T: Daryll Warner holds a glass of wine while chatting with Leslie Ann St John, head of Business Development at Genethics Pharmaceuticals at the Aioli Restaurant, Ellerslie Plaza, Maraval, yesterday. —Photo: Jermaine Cruickshank
Daryll Warner, one of the sons of Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner, is in Trinidad and Tobago for the rest of the week before he heads to New York, USA, for Labour Day celebrations next Monday.
The younger Warner, who has been the subject of rumours about him and his elder brother Daryan’s inability to travel outside of the United States, spoke to the Express yesterday while at the Twist Bar on Ariapita Avenue in Woodbrook.
He had earlier had a lengthy lunch at Aioli Restaurant in Ellerslie Plaza and was expected to stop by at the Trini Posse stand at the Queen’s Park Oval last night for the cricket match between Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel and Guyana Amazon Warriors in the Limacol Caribbean Premier League semi-final.
Daryll told the Express he was meeting Daryan in New York next week but could not confirm whether his brother will also travel back to Trinidad and Tobago.
“He’s in New York right now. Like me, he can travel anytime he wants but flights are full,” said Daryll, adding that he paid US$862 for his ticket home.
“How come no one wanted to purchase a ticket for me to come home? I would have welcomed that because ticket prices are expensive,” he said in reference to a group who called themselves “Friends of Jack Warner” who had purchased a first-class one way ticket for his elder brother to come back to Trinidad before the Chaguanas West by-election on July 29.
His brother had responded that he would utilise the gift if he received a cheque for double his 2011 earnings which had amounted to close to $6 million.
Daryll, who described himself as a “simpleton”, said his family has been subject of relentless harassment over “allegations” which cost his father his Cabinet position.
Questioned on whether he or his brother were co-operating witnesses in an investigation by US agencies into world soccer governing body, FIFA, he said it was “all allegations”.
“I have heard I was in jail, that I was under house arrest, that I can’t leave Miami or I can’t travel. But I don’t feel compelled to respond to those things,” he said.
When the Express pointed out that his brother did address those issues with the Express, he replied: “My brother has kids and a family so he was compelled to respond. I am a bachelor. I have nothing to hide. I have no problems. I am just enjoying life.”
Asked whether he felt it was the media or the politicians who made an issue of the Warner brothers not being in Trinidad, he quickly replied that it was “politics”.
“What happens here is all gutter politics. It was desperation on the part of the United National Congress (UNC). If they have an issue with Jack, that is their issue. It does not define his children,” he said.
Daryll said he was “elated” that his father had won the Chaguanas West by-election, as “no good deed goes unpunished”.
“The by-election showed that people could pick sense from nonsense. Jack has always tried to help anyone he could. He used his position in FIFA and in politics to help people. I am happy for him. You have to get past the thorns in a rose to get to the rose, you know. Is Jack Warner perfect? No. But his heart is in the right place,” he said.
In February, Warner, who was then national security minister, had challenged anyone who wanted to know his sons’ whereabouts to contact them and had dared the media to publish anything about them. This was at the time of widespread rumours that they had been detained in Miami.
In March, Reuters News Agency published a report by Mark Hosenball which stated that Daryan Warner was a “co-operating witness” in an investigation into allegations of corruption in FIFA.
Jack Warner has consistently maintained his innocence of all allegations.
During the by-election campaign, Warner had appealed to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to leave his family alone after she raised concern about Concacaf’s Integrity Report which had accused Warner of fraud in his management of the organisation.
Those allegations, the Prime Minister had said, had dogged Warner’s political career.
Asked why he has not visited Trinidad and Tobago in the past nine months, Daryll said he intentionally stayed out.
He said he arrived “hassle-free” into Trinidad on Tuesday and hoped that his exit would be the same.
everything I wanted to say and a bit morekaylex wrote:This is why we people fraid to have Local Govt Elections....
Zombie zone
By Clarence Rambharat
Story Updated: Aug 12, 2013 at 9:34 PM ECT
There is no pleasure in watching a Government perish. In the Partnership’s case, this journey is in slow motion, organ by organ. Jack’s appointment, then Reshmi’s, signalled that the brain was not fully functional. Section 34 confirmed the ailment. The THA and Chaguanas West losses were just practice for the undertakers, as a more elaborate burial looms. Without mercy killing, we are watching the walking dead.
After Chaguanas West, it’s fitting that Jack Warner’s humiliation of Kamla and her UNC marks a point of no return for the People’s Partnership. The PM knows that the lagahoo can change its shape and form to suit the circumstances, but it remains a beast. The demise of the PM’s independence started with her partnership with Jack and his selection to Cabinet, a decision inevitable but impossible. After FIFA there was no way Jack would squeeze his natural tendencies into the tight-fitting restraints of public office. FIFA, the den of private fiat and greed, is not a recommended stepping stone to island politics, long void of decency, and long suffering from the terminal disease of get rich quick. But for Kamla, there was no choice, and the consequences have followed.
In this zombie politics, the Chaguanas West by-election and its aftermath provide an insight into the bad mental state of the Partnership. The most pathetic by-election sight was the sari-clad UNC candidate, boyfriend on her arm, using their engagement at the Charlieville Shiv Mandir as by-election theatrics. It’s hard to believe political advisors and spin doctors offered this grade F script as a vote puller to a sensible PM and political leader, and got it accepted. But these same quacks have the ears of the PM on everything and they run things. Over three years the damage is visible.
Over three years Jack was just the starting point from which Kamla’s term as PM is marked by three indefensible events which in each case marked her Government for death.
First, in still unexplained circumstances the PM, as head of government and head of the country’s National Security Council, somehow accepted a most porous recommendation to invite His Excellency to rubber stamp the appointment of Reshmi Ramnarine as head of the country anti-narcotics intelligence agency. A typical recruiter’s 30-second glance at the candidate’s resume would have revealed Ms Ramnarine as a non-starter.
The PM’s whisperers managed to convince the multi-degreed former academic, Senior Counsel, and seasoned politician to accept a recommendation that was bound to fail. Most of these whisperers have exited the stage, pushed or sacrificed. But, the PM must live with the long-term effects. Much has been said and written by me on Reshmi because it is not just a bad decision. It is a critical point in the PM’s decline for two reasons.
First, it demonstrated the extent to which the PM was so uninvolved in her own decision-making that she could offer no defence of it when called upon to. And second, Reshmi happened so early in the PM’s term of office that it could have been explained and corrected right away, or it could be denied, defended, and repeated. The second option has been the consistent choice.
One allegation on Reshmi is that the appointment was scripted by a Police Special Branch officer and rubberstamped all the way to the end. That method of madness would become the Partnership Government’s brand, and the PM’s modus operandi.
After Reshmi, and after much study by the PM, state board chairmen and directors were appointed. In quick time, chairmen began falling apart: Caribbean Airlines, once and then again, T&TEC, and altogether at least one-third of all the boards. The PM cannot present a single piece of evidence of due diligence in her selection of state boards. She’s followed the same script that has undone her predecessors: names from party hacks, sycophants, and financiers; a useless bureaucracy at Corporation Sole styled to take whatever names are offered; and, a Cabinet designed to endorse, then defend mercilessly. There have been at least a dozen glaring resume embarrassments for the PM, including a member of the Commission of Enquiry into the events of 1990 and the deputy chairman at the Airports Authority who over-stated his academic qualifications by three university degrees.
The hallmark of good governance is sensible and studied appointments, chaperoned by due diligence. Kamla’s board methodology is as fragile, reckless, and problematic as every other administration’s, demonstrating that even with all her talk, she learnednothing from the politicians she had the privilege of beating in party and general elections. Over three years the initial failure has damaged the Government, but more importantly it provided evidence that the PM is not in command of the decision-making “process”, but is as much a victim of it as the rest of the country.
And third, the PM has been disingenuous and downright irresponsible over Section 34.
To date the origins of this short-lived section are unknown, and the Government knows the consequences of the truth ever coming out. It is unacceptable in 2013 that the origins of a clause in legislation enacted into law, so corrosive that it had to be expunged in hasty parliamentary sessions, cannot be explained. The People’s Partnership will be punished at the polls for its sickening attitude on Section 34.
Section 34 says that thuggery takes place on the floor of the legislature without consequences. Section 34 was no more than a prison break, concocted amidst the stained mahogany of the chambers. So severe is the Section 34 damage to the country’s psyche, its consequences should play out in the dank walls of a prison cell. The country is likely to have that in mind whenever it votes.
That voting opportunity could come in a few weeks and the zombies cannot withstand another round of election pounding.
* Clarence Rambharat is a lawyer and a university lecturer
Soundwave wrote:the only thing that can destroy a nokia 1100 is if adi falls on it...
DFC wrote:Look at his feet ! Wtf.
What kinda rattans jeans and shoes kamla have on?
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