Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar's seat in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives next to Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er was emp­ty for most of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon's House ses­sion. Cab­i­net mem­bers in the House yes­ter­day may have had their own views on that sce­nario fol­low­ing this week's events con­cern­ing Warn­er and his boss-and fol­low­ing Thurs­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing. But Per­sad- Bisses­sar's ab­sence from the House yes­ter­day was due to a me­dia brief­ing with Part­ner­ship lead­ers fol­low­ing Thurs­day's meet­ing with them. Per­sad-Bisses­sar moved this week to-suc­cess­ful­ly-be­gin to re­in­force the Part­ner­ship's foun­da­tion with PP lead­ers as ten­sions with her par­ty chair­man Warn­er have arisen with­in UNC.

In the House yes­ter­day, Warn­er ap­peared sub­dued, speak­ing lit­tle and re­spond­ing even less on re­cent de­vel­op­ments. This week's events in­volv­ing Warn­er, from his ap­pear­ance at a protest by res­i­dents of the PM's Siparia con­stituen­cy, to his state­ments launch­ing his death penal­ty pe­ti­tion, had ap­peared to be shots mark­ing start of UNC's ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion. It ap­peared for a while that par­ty bat­tle lines were be­ing drawn for UNC's March 24 ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion where Warn­er will de­fend his chair­man­ship. And that the elec­tion might be no less sig­nif­i­cant, and bit­ter, as the 2006 elec­tion which oust­ed Bas­deo Pan­day's lead­er­ship.

How­ev­er, yes­ter­day Warn­er abrupt­ly dropped his pe­ti­tion cam­paign, say­ing he was do­ing so "fol­low­ing Thurs­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing."(sic). "This is my fi­nal state­ment on this mat­ter," Warn­er's re­lease stat­ed. Ques­tions have now arisen whether what might have led to it all start­ed on Mon­day, far away from the Cab­i­net's north­ern lo­ca­tion. It has not been with­out some sus­pi­cions that Mon­day's fiery protest oc­curred in Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­stituen­cy, days af­ter the strength of lead­er­ship and her par­ty were pro­claimed at UNC's Jan­u­ary 24 lead­er­ship an­niver­sary bash.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had un­of­fi­cial­ly launched UNC's elec­tion cam­paign at the cel­e­bra­tion where she warned mem­bers to choose wise­ly can­di­dates wise­ly. Her state­ment came com­plete with elec­tion "promis­es" which will re­in­force her lead­er­ship against pos­si­ble in­ter­lop­ers such as for­mer leader Bas­deo Pan­day's Gen­er­a­tion Next slate. Or oth­ers. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had an­nounced con­ces­sions main­ly for se­niors tar­get­ing a sec­tor which rou­tine­ly sup­port­ed Pan­day's UNC. But less than a week lat­er, the re­al chal­lenge in the elec­tion reared its head. This week had al­ready start­ed off on a low note for Warn­er on Mon­day when he came in for heat at a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee meet­ing re­gard­ing the au­dit­ed PURE road project whose re­turn he's been lob­by­ing for, Gov­ern­ment sources claimed. The is­sue is still be­ing ex­am­ined.

But lat­er on Mon­day, it would have been the PM who was em­bar­rassed by protests from some of her con­stituents tak­ing is­sue with her rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Worse, it oc­curred when Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in near­by Debe, launch­ing a project. Res­i­dents who called for Warn­er-deem­ing him the "can do Min­is­ter"-re­ceived a vis­it next day from Warn­er who "calmed" them and lob­bied for PURE's re­turn to do the re­quired road­work. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials be­lieve the protest was specif­i­cal­ly planned. Chair­man of UNC's Siparia con­stituen­cy Ram­per­sad Hardial didn't an­swer calls but the ex­ec­u­tive's sec­re­tary said: "We don't have protests like that in this con­stituen­cy. So I'd like to be­lieve this was or­gan­ised by forces out­side the area." Mem­bers al­so iden­ti­fied peo­ple from Arou­ca who were in pic­tures of the pro­test­ers.

Apolo­gies for PM.....

The sit­u­a­tion might have passed on, save for a me­dia ad­vi­so­ry from Warn­er aide, Anne Dook­ie, that day in­di­cat­ing Warn­er would vis­it near­by Pe­tit Morne and Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ex­pect­ed to, al­so. A fact the PM's of­fice quick­ly de­nied, stat­ing it was "not on her itin­er­ary." Com­pound­ing the sit­u­a­tion around him, Warn­er's state­ment at Tues­day's pe­ti­tion launch­ing proved more in­trigu­ing when he said it was "our op­por­tu­ni­ty" to speak to the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dents. The mes­sage he sent that day al­so in­clud­ed his state­ment: "If the Gov­ern­ment is sidelin­ing me, Ch­agua­nas West is not," If that open de­c­la­ra­tion caused a dou­ble take, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's im­me­di­ate dis­tanc­ing of her­self from Warn­er's cam­paign, was more telling.

Whether or not smart­ing at Mon­day's Siparia protest, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly made it clear it was Warn­er's per­son­al cam­paign and the pe­ti­tion was not Cab­i­net pol­i­cy-some­thing she re­in­forced to re­porters yes­ter­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar may hard­ly en­dorse any par­tic­i­pant in UNC's elec­tion since she risks ap­pear­ing par­tial and cre­at­ing (fur­ther) di­vi­sion. But her em­pha­sis that Warn­er's pe­ti­tion was his own-and even his own ini­tia­tive to do the pe­ti­tion-gen­er­at­ed at­ten­tion and cu­rios­i­ty since the Gov­ern­ment of which Warn­er is a part, is al­ready push­ing to en­force the death penal­ty. It ap­peared every­thing came to a head at the end of Thurs­day's Cab­i­net ses­sion, when it was con­firmed Per­sad-Bisses­sar broached the is­sue of MPs op­er­at­ing in oth­er MPs' con­stituen­cies with­out in­form­ing the area MP. Of­fi­cials de­scribed the PM as ici­ly fu­ri­ous about the mix-up of in­for­ma­tion on the Siparia is­sue and an apol­o­gy was sought, of­fi­cials added.

They said Warn­er at­trib­uted some of the is­sue to cer­tain Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials' fail­ure to in­form Per­sad-Bisses­sar that he was go­ing to the South area, and a mix-up in word­ing arrange­ments by his team. Oth­er sources said he's main­tained that his pe­ti­tion was launched since his con­stituents are af­fect­ed by crime. Yes­ter­day ef­forts were in the works for an apol­o­gy on the Siparia press re­lease mix-up to be made to the PM by Warn­er's staff, UNC of­fi­cials said. They con­firmed Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­cerns on Thurs­day were sup­port­ed by front-line min­is­ters and sen­a­tors and one MP "tried to make peace."( sic) They said MSJ's Er­rol McLeod, COP's Prakash Ra­mad­har and sev­er­al oth­ers didn't speak.

The sit­u­a­tion al­so led to dis­cus­sions on a per­ceived lack of uni­ty in PP's "Uni­ty" ad­min­is­tra­tion. But talks were not con­clud­ed since Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to at­tend oth­er meet­ings that evening. Yes­ter­day UNC vice chair­man Fuad Khan, asked about the pro­to­col on MPs en­ter­ing con­stituen­cies of oth­ers, said, "It's a mat­ter of cour­tesy. But there's no writ­ten pol­i­cy. If there are prob­lems, maybe it should be writ­ten pol­i­cy."

Quo Vadis Jack now..?

Per­sad Bisses­sar at a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day said she didn't know why Warn­er dropped his pe­ti­tion plan and had not spo­ken to him on it. She firm­ly main­tained his plan was not Gov­ern­ment's and it would be "fool­hardy" for any min­is­ter to sign a pe­ti­tion un­sanc­tioned by Cab­i­net. And post-Cab­i­net, Min­is­ters who were asked about the is­sue have in­deed toed the line on it (save for the frank Her­bert Vol­ney.) In a move which threat­ened to chal­lenge the PM's au­thor­i­ty, Warn­er had al­ready planned a sched­ule of meet­ings start­ing in South this week­end, of­fi­cials said. But now reined-in on the pe­ti­tion, and omi­nous­ly silent, it re­mains to be seen what his next move will be. Bereft of in­ter­na­tion­al pow­er fol­low­ing his FI­FA prob­lems, Warn­er seems con­vinced he's be­ing side­lined lo­cal­ly in Gov­ern­ment.

UNC of­fi­cials who have queried the need to use the pe­ti­tion to cam­paign for the death penal­ty, which Gov­ern­ment sup­ports, al­so say he didn't need to fight for UNC's chair­man­ship since he's guar­an­teed to win. How­ev­er, Warn­er's pe­ti­tion which he adopt­ed fol­low­ing the mur­der of three fish­er­men from his con­stituen­cy, hinges on a na­tion­al is­sue up­on which the PP en­tered Gov­ern­ment-curb­ing crime. Warn­er's pe­ti­tion would, there­fore, have gained sup­port from, and giv­en voice to those who be­lieve Gov­ern­ment has failed on this in­creas­ing­ly sore point. It guar­an­teed him au­to­mat­ic sup­port and an op­por­tu­ni­ty for his Gov­ern­ment team's fail­ing to be shown up, as well as to re­in­force his rat­ing as a per­former, and his po­lit­i­cal stocks. Plus that of any loy­al­ist slate of his that may con­test the par­ty poll. Most of the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive is pro-Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­volv­ing ju­nior min­is­ters and sen­a­tors, while less than a hand­ful are per­ceived to be Warn­er sup­port­ers.

Whether by ac­ci­dent or de­sign, Warn­er's abort­ed six-week pe­ti­tion cam­paign across T&T would have al­so co­in­cid­ed with the UNC's elec­tion cam­paign lead­ing to the March 24 poll. No­tably al­so, Warn­er at Tues­day's pe­ti­tion launch sig­nalled he was align­ing him­self with oth­er, an­ti UNC, po­lit­i­cal part­ners. While he claimed he'd in­vit­ed a "PNM deputy chair­man" (who didn't show up) he re­ceived sup­port from COP vice chair­man Ver­non de Li­ma who has been crit­i­cal of PP per­for­mance . This has ex­tend­ed to Warn­er who De Li­ma de­mand­ed should step down fol­low­ing the FI­FA furore last June. COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har had al­so called for Warn­er to do same.

But Ra­mad­har had en­dorsed the death penal­ty dur­ing a re­cent East Trinidad tour and Warn­er who was present, had agreed. De Li­ma told TG on Thurs­day that he hadn't dis­cussed his ap­pear­ance with Warn­er with his par­ty nor Ra­mad­har. Asked how he agreed to ap­pear af­ter he'd called on Warn­er to step down last June, De Li­ma said Warn­er called him to ap­pear with him af­ter see­ing him talk about the death penal­ty the night be­fore. De Li­ma added, "Warn­er is no friend of mine. But he's brave enough to stand up and say what he feels about cer­tain things." "This is my per­son­al thing. I'd gone on a plat­form and promised peo­ple a safer T&T. But we're not de­liv­er­ing that and if we don't de­liv­er, peo­ple will have jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to re­nounce us. I feel like I be­trayed peo­ple." De Li­ma said he would dis­cuss his ap­pear­ance with the COP.

Ra­mad­har who ob­vi­ous­ly re­alised the sit­u­a­tion could com­pro­mise COP's ear­li­er po­si­tions on Warn­er, sought to right the sit­u­a­tion on Thurs­day. He called for a ref­er­en­dum on the death penal­ty, say­ing the "is­sue is big­ger than any in­di­vid­ual." COP chair­man Joseph Toney added yes­ter­day: "Mr De Li­ma's ap­pear­ance with Warn­er was a per­son­al de­ci­sion. The COP is ab­solute­ly not part of that pe­ti­tion. We didn't man­date sup­port­ers to sign." De Li­ma said yes­ter­day he was sor­ry Warn­er dropped the pe­ti­tion. COP's Ra­mad­har at yes­ter­day's PP brief­ing, said it was nec­es­sary for the pop­u­la­tion "to un­der­stand that we are to­geth­er stronger than ever." This week, their leader ap­par­ent­ly in­deed made her strength felt and com­ing days in­to the UNC March elec­tion will re­veal the depth of this-as well as how Warn­er han­dles this.