Sacha Wil­son

Dis­si­dent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment Jack Warn­er, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters have been spared ex­pul­sion from the par­ty.

Yes­ter­day, the 25 charges which were each slapped on the dis­si­dents were dropped dur­ing a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing be­fore the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee at the par­ty's Rien­zi Com­plex head­quar­ters. This clears the way for Warn­er to con­test the post of chair­man, which Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day cur­rent­ly holds, at the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions ten­ta­tive­ly set for Jan­u­ary 24, 2010. The date of the elec­tions will be con­firmed on Oc­to­ber 25. The three were or­dered to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee be­cause of a fra­cas on March 22, in which there were fist fights and scuf­fles when the Ram­jack team al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to have their sup­port­ers at­tend a par­ty con­gress. Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter yes­ter­day's hear­ing, Warn­er said he felt vin­di­cat­ed, while Ma­haraj said their next step was the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions.

But Pe­ters re­peat­ed his call for Pan­day to step down. Ma­haraj ex­plained that the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee met yes­ter­day to de­cide whether to pro­ceed with the dis­ci­pli­nary charges against them. "We made cer­tain sub­mis­sions to­day be­fore them," he said. "I made it on be­half of my­self...Mr Om Lal­la and Mr Kelvin Ramkissoon ap­peared for Mr Warn­er, and Jagdeo Singh ap­peared for Win­ston Pe­ters." He said they were able to con­vince the com­mit­tee that it had no ju­ris­dic­tion to pro­ceed with the charges "for rea­sons of bias and there were no wit­ness­es and the charges should be dis­missed and they with­drew the let­ter which re­quired us to at­tend to an­swer the charges." He said the com­mit­tee found that there was no ba­sis to pro­ceed with the charges and would rec­om­mend to the ex­ec­u­tive that they could not pro­ceed with the charges against them.

Ram­jack's next move

Ma­haraj, MP for Tabaquite, said the next step would be the in­ter­nal elec­tions which should be fair and trans­par­ent, in which the pub­lic and mem­bers of the par­ty would have con­fi­dence in. "We want to make it quite clear, we are UNC, we not leav­ing the UNC, we are re­main­ing in the UNC," he said. "We be­lieve that the UNC can be the po­lit­i­cal ve­hi­cle to take the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. "You would have seen in the Par­lia­ment how we op­er­ate, in that we have tak­en the war to the PNM, we have Mr Man­ning on the run, the back­bench has be­come the front bench of the Op­po­si­tion. And we in­tend to con­tin­ue with our mes­sage of change and our move­ment for change." Asked whether this was the first step for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, Ma­haraj said they were al­ways in­ter­est­ed in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, but it must be based on prin­ci­ples and the prin­ci­ples of change. He said whether or not they would fight the in­ter­nal elec­tions was pre­ma­ture.