Saturday, August 11 2012

National Security Minister Jack Warner declared he would decriminalise the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP), which he said, the People’s National Movement (PNM) criminalised.

“We did not criminalise the URP you know. The URP was criminalised by the PNM.

Therefore, I’m making the point to you, that what we are trying to do here now is to decriminalise the URP and all those other agencies. Mr Rowley could vex if he wants. Who vex, vex. I will not allow him at all to put fear in me,” said Warner.

Speaking to the media after the Golden Ibis Brigade Field training Exercise in Blanchisseuse, Warner said he would catch the friends of the Opposition party, who he said, were involved in the drug trade.

Warner said, when the Defence Force seized those friends, it would be swift, surgical and clinical. “I will catch those friends of the Opposition who are in high places. We shall catch those criminals who support him.

My Government, Mrs Persad-Bissessar’s Government, never petted any drug lord in URP,” he said. Warner also hit against Opposition Leader, Dr Keith Rowley’s statement that he, Warner, wanted to be Prime Minister and those who opposed his appointment as National Security Minister. “I have never had any aspirations to be Prime Minister of this country. I never had, and I never will have. That is not my intention,” he said. “I have an aspiration to achieve, as a Minister of National Security, because that is the portfolio that the Prime Minister, in her wisdom, has given me. And anybody who don’t like that, knows what they have to do.”

Warner said those “friends” who pay the bills of, and buy plane tickets for those against his appointment were drug lords, or drug runners. “All those who protest against Jack Warner as Minister of National Security want us to fail because if we fail, it gives them and their friends a chance to succeed,” he said. In addition, Warner described Rowley’s statement that PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar had aspirations for the Presidency as “foolish and baseless.”

He noted that the power in the country was in the hands of the PM therefore it made no sense to give up that power voluntarily. He said the PM has never indicated that the workload was too much for her, but the only person who could judge that, was the PM herself.

“Something has to be wrong with the guy. He has run out of issues to talk about,” said Warner. “It might be too much for Mr Rowley. That is why he would never be PM in our collective lifetimes. But not for Mrs Persad-Bissessar.”