(Trinidad Express) As promised, People’s National Movement (PNM) Senator Fitzgerald Hinds yesterday moved a motion calling for National Security Minister Jack Warner to be sent to the Privileges Committee of the Senate for “knowingly and willfully misleading the Senate” last Tuesday.
Senate President Timothy Hamel-Smith said he would rule on Hinds’s request at a subsequent sitting of the Senate.
In presenting his motion, Hinds referred to statements made by Warner that it was the Police Service Commission which recommended the ex-gratia payments to former police commissioner Dwayne Gibbs and deputy commissioner Jack Ewatski and that the Government acted on the basis of that recommendation when it paid $1.2 million to each of the two men.
Hinds said it was now established, based on statements made by the PSC denying Warner’s assertion, that his statement to the Senate was “wholly untrue and therefore misleading”.
Hinds said given Warner’s intimate knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the cessation of the contracts in his capacity as National Security Minister, he must have known that his statement to the Parliament—that it was the Police Service Commission which recommended the payments— was inaccurate.
“The minister was wantonly reckless in his responsibility to provide accurate information to the Senate and seriously misinformed the Senate in a material way,” he said.
