Jack gets high marks from PM Kamla

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar gave Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner high marks for his performance during her absence from Trinidad and Tobago for 10 days.

"On all counts the answer is yes," she told reporters who wanted to get her views on how Warner performed.

She also said Warner will act for her whe next she leaves the country on government business.

The Prime Minister is scheduled to attend a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September and a follow-up CARICOM summit in the same month. The venue for the CARICOM meeting has not yet been determined.

Persad-Bissessar also spoke about other issues, including certain controversial matters relating to the Local Government Election (LGE).

She said she is not bothered that certain members of the United National Congress (UNC) have decided to run as independents in the July 26 vote.

She had not yet been fully briefed on the matter but had a good idea of the situation. The Prime Minister said in a democracy "there will never be and there must never be 100 per cent agreement on anything or everything that you do…The day that starts happening, then something will be very wrong."

She said what matters most is how parties manage their differences. "There are 134 candidates, there were over 600 or 700 nominees and if one, two or three people take a different view, I am not particularly perturbed by that," she said.

The UNC political leader predicted a resounding win for the People’s Partnership.

The UNC had control of only five of the 14 municipal corporations in Trinidad in the last LGE election which was in 2003. The PNM government had postponed the election four years in a row.

On Tuesday night she met with all the party’s candidates and campaign managers "to be fully briefed on what’s happening on the campaign trail and to tighten, widen and deepen the campaign."