The people seen drinking beer and eating bake and shark at the Independence Day fireworks display at the Divali Nagar site in Chaguanas on Monday may have been actors in a plot to discredit his bond with the Hindu community, Chaguanas West MP Jack Warner said yesterday.

Warner said he ensured that all guidelines were followed during preparations for the cultural show and fireworks display that he had sponsored. And security guards were placed at the gates to ensure that vendors were not allowed on the premises with alcohol and meat.

Warner’s response came in a letter to Deokienanan Sharma, president of the National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC), the organisation responsible for the operations of the venue, which prohibits alcoholic beverages and meat from being sold or consumed on the premises.

The NCIC believes Warner should have done more to prevent celebrants from entering with alcohol and fish. Sharma said he was aware that alcohol and meat were being sold outside the compound and of reports of patrons drinking beer and eating fish on the Chaguanas premises.

Warner, in his letter, stated that all guidelines outlined by the organisation were followed on the night. He said all food vendors were physically removed from the ground to ensure that the sanctity of the grounds was maintained. Even the food vendors who indicated that they were not selling meat were barred from entering the compound, the letter stated.

’I will not hesitate to add that my detractors are intent on creating confusion between the Hindu community and me, and more so with the National Council of Indian Culture, whose board, I understand, was divided in allowing me use of the grounds,’ Warner wrote.

Warner said the Independence Day cultural and fireworks display would be an annual affair, ’...and not as a Jack Warner affair, but a collaboration between the National Council of Indian Culture and myself’.

During the activities, stalls were set up outside the venue where bake and shark was being sold. And patrons were seen drinking alcohol near a murti of the Hindu god Lord Shiva which overlooks the sacred compound, it was learned.