…in Parliament vote
(Trinidad Express) Opposition MP Jack Warner says that his crucial vote in the Parliament on Friday night that secured the passage of a bill meant to tackle financial crimes such as insider trading was not a betrayal of the United National Congress but a matter of putting his country first.
“I didn’t vote for the PNM, you know, I voted for the bill because it was in the best interest of the country,” Warner said in an interview with the Sunday Express.
Had Warner not voted for the Securities Bill, 2009, at the House of Representatives sitting, it would not have been passed since it needed a three-fifth’s majority for passage. Government does have a majority in the Parliament with its 26 seats but Tertiary Education Minister Christine Kangaloo was absent for Friday’s proceedings making Warner’s vote crucial for the success of the bill.
The 12 UNC MPs present in the Parliament Chamber for the vote on the bill all abstained.
Asked whether his vote for the Securities Bill confirms his status as a dissident in the Opposition party, Warner said:
“No. It shows my independence. If dissidence means independence, fine, but it shows my independence of thought and, of course, my love for country.”
However, Opposition Leader and UNC political leader Basdeo Panday told the Sunday Express that Warner not only defied the UNC but also “betrayed the trust of the people who have voted for him”. Warner is the UNC’s MP for the Chaguanas West constituency, a seat he won in the 2007 general election.
“We will now have to look after the people of Chaguanas (West) because they appear to have been abandoned,” Panday said in a telephone interview.
Warner and UNC MP for Tabaquite, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, have been leading a campaign for change in the party and in the process, have challenged the leadership of Panday. Warner insisted that he voted for the bill because it would protect the interests of investors in T&T given the problems of the Colonial Life Insurance Co (CLICO) and three other subsidiaries of CL Financial and the resulting initial $1.3 billion taxpayer bailout authorised by the Cabinet.
“This has nothing to do with party. This has to do with the people and whenever you have to deal with the people, the UNC, they are always found wanting.
“Whether it is police reform, whether it is efforts to help the Hindu Credit Union and now an attempt, of course, to help investors, they are found wanting.
“So they can’t get with themselves to say that the bill, though there may be some minor deficiencies, is something that will help the people of this country, the investors,” Warner said.
Panday said Warner’s vote reflected the kind of indiscipline that he claims he is dealing with in the UNC, referring to the campaign for change in the party being jointly led by Warner and Maharaj.
“First of all, I expected that because, as you know, I have been saying for sometime that they made a deal with the PNM and this now is incontrovertible evidence that I was right. I expected that sooner or later they would have been forced to expose themselves. I didn’t think that it would have been so soon,” Panday said.
He said Warner’s actions in the Parliament on Friday comprised “the height of indiscipline,” were “extremely serious” and would “come up for discussion” when the UNC executive holds its weekly meeting at the Rienzi Complex, Couva, on Wednesday afternoon.
