Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar says her party’s former chairman, now “arch nemesis,” Independent Liberal Party (ILP) leader Jack Warner, cried like a baby when she demanded his letter of resignation in 2013 and instructed him to clear his name. But she asserted she was a strong woman and all of his current lies and fabrications against her would not make her cry.
“I tell you, this woman no cry. This woman will not cry, will never cry,” she said as she boasted of her strength as a woman during a United National Congress cottage meeting in the Oropouche East constituency on Tuesday night. Revealing details previously unknown to the public, Persad-Bissessar said when she demanded Warner’s resignation after the Sir David Simmonds’ Concacaf report, he (Warner) asked for seven more days but she refused.
“He swore he will do everything he could to take down my Government but we have stood strong. We have stood tall and we will continue to stand,” she said. The PM’s statement came hours after Warner released another tape at a press conference in Port-of-Spain, which he claimed allegedly told of “sleaze, graft, corruption, sexual misconduct and misbehaviour in public office” arising out of an alleged incident at the Diplomatic Centre in 2013.
Shrugging off Warner’s allegations once again, the PM said her strength and gender, plus the fact that she fired him, had him angry and delusional. “I formed a government in 2010 and I did my best to ensure that we delivered and when ministers failed they were sacked. I do not apologise for that.
“I am a woman and I am strong. He cannot handle that. The first female prime minister I am of this very great nation and so he resents my gender, he does not respect the office I hold and that is not an insult just to me, it is an insult to the people of Trinidad and Tobago and every woman of Trinidad and Tobago,” she added.
She said he was delusional “because he knows for a fact that he cannot overthrow me and I have refused every of his attempts to control and to influence me.” Saying she was fed up with the “gruesome twosome”—Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley and Warner—Persad-Bissessar said she was ready to fight them both “any time, anywhere, any day and beat them.”
She said she would stand and fight like a mother whose child was in danger for her country. She said she would not play into their hands and be distracted by their lies and allegations.
Kamla Not afraid of attacks
Persad-Bissessar said her focus ahead of the September 7 general election would be on issues, rolling out her Government’s plans, policies and programmes to continue to build a new Trinidad and Tobago. She said the People’s National Movement (PNM) had no plans or programmes, that is why they were fabricating lies and allegations against her Government which had outperformed every single government in the history of T&T.
Taking a cue from Warner, Persad-Bissessar took off the gloves and took aim at her former Cabinet colleague and “his sidekick Mr Rowley”, saying their stories were becoming more bizarre, wild and delusional each week but she will not play out their script. “My lawyers will deal with their lies and fabrications. I will not play into their script because this is now becoming like ‘stay tuned.’
“You remember the series on TV, Peyton Place? They say ‘Stay tuned next week... coming soon to a theatre near you’ is the latest in the episode in the series of a man on the list of the most wanted men in the world,” she added.
She told the audience, which included former finance minister Gerald Yetming and former Senate president Timothy Hamel-Smith, that Warner, “is like a Jack in a box who is trying to jump out of the box and that box is that he must answer for racketeering, he must answer for wire fraud transfer, he must answer for money laundering and those charges are not by us here, those charges come from every country around the world.”
She had the audience laughing when she said she had one good thing to say about Warner and that was he did not discriminate. “He does not discriminate. He took money from every continent in the world, including right here in the Caribbean... from Haiti,” she said. Saying her Government will win the September 7 election and her seat will be the first to be declared for the UNC, she also took aim at Rowley, saying he was bitter because she fought him with the Emailgate matter and cleared her name.
She called on Rowley to clear the air on the statement attributed to the Laventille PNM candidate Fitzgerald Hinds about “people like alligators in a lagoon.” “You never condemned the Calcutta ship statement in Tobago and now today your members are speaking about alligators in a lagoon. “Well, let me tell you, I planted rice, like many of you, in a lagoon. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what matters is where you are going and where you are,” she added.