ST JOHN’S, Antigua, May 20 2017 – Opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) Senator Damani Tabor says he has reported to the police, a threat made against his life by Government Senator Lennox Weston.
Tabor, the spokesman for the UPP, has also called on Weston to resign.
“We demand that Senator Weston do the honourable thing and resign as any truly honourable legislator in other countries would,” he said in a statement.
Weston explained that he was angry at Tabor’s consistent reference to a charity started by Maria Browne, the wife of Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
“If it was my daughter, I would have already carried you to Parham Wharf and drown you,” Weston, who is the Senator Majority Leader, told Tabor.
“I am going to throw him overboard and if he can swim, he will swim back,” Weston said, ignoring warnings from Senate President Alincia Williams Grant.
Tabor has been questioning whether Maria Browne’s charity, Share Incorporated, had benefited from public funds, after the government said it was partnering with the foundation to create a venture capital fund for business start-ups and expansions, with emphasis on female and youth entrepreneurs.
The government had said the charity would only be a contributor to the fund and the $2 million to be used for entrepreneurial development would come from several sources, including the government which would provide the core, the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank, among others.
In March this year, Prime Minister Browne said he was prepared to “resign forthwith”, if allegations that the charity being run by his wife, has benefitted from public funds.
Speaking during the debate on the Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Bill 2017, Browne told legislators that if those making the allegations are able to bring “evidence of even one cent” he would step down.
Opponents have argued that the move smacks of impropriety forcing Prime Minister Browne to tell the Parliament that opposition operatives were engaged in spreading the false claim.
Browne said that the detractors have also written to the Office of National Drug and Money Laundering Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Financial Services Regulatory Commission and copied the international community to say he has “taken” public funds and placed them into the charity run by his wife.
Senator Tabor has strongly condemned what he called “incitement of his abduction and murder” adding that “this repugnant behaviour is not excused by parliamentary immunity.”
Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CaribbeanNewsService/
Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/CNewsService
Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/caribbeannewsservice/
