Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter he said it on Thurs­day, Jack Warn­er's re­mark–"What goes around comes around"–might have been per­ceived to be ap­ply­ing in all dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal quar­ters with all man­ner of in­ter­pre­ta­tions.Warn­er was speak­ing af­ter his news­pa­per de­buted with a 1986 flash­back pic­ture of the NAR's cry­ing child poster used in their cam­paign which vot­ed out the PNM.Warn­er's pa­per used it to re­mind the PP he helped birth not to al­low an­oth­er tear to fall from sup­port­ers.

The irony of the sit­u­a­tion–among the mul­ti­tudes of such this week–and re­spec­tive mixed mes­sages be­ing telegraphed would al­so have ex­tend­ed to the for­mer PP jefe's sta­tus on the date of yes­ter­day's PP an­niver­sary ral­ly. Warn­er, who con­firmed at­ten­dance, now holds much di­min­ished ca­pac­i­ty mi­nus ex­ec­u­tive sta­tus.PP's ral­ly plans in­clud­ed con­tin­gen­cies for Warn­er and sup­port­ers in the event of a grand show-steal­ing en­trance/ex­it. It re­mains to be seen if yes­ter­day's events will see im­proved Warn­er/PP re­la­tions. Or not.

But Warn­er and UNC's five nom­i­nees for Ch­agua­nas West–none min­is­ters, sources said–are cur­rent­ly the least but by no means last of the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion's bat­tles."E-mail­gate" bro­ken by the Op­po­si­tion PNM on Mon­day sim­mered over three days of par­lia­men­tary de­bate eclips­ing PP an­niver­sary plans and cul­mi­nat­ing the day be­fore Warn­er filed nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for Ch­agua­nas West.

Ac­cord­ing to how this pans out, it may tru­ly be as Warn­er not­ed three weeks ago: "In pol­i­tics, tim­ing is every­thing..."The Gov­ern­ment's shocked si­lence on Mon­day when Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley opened "E-mail­gate" mor­phed in­to right­eous in­dig­na­tion by Wednes­day's end of de­bate, with sear­ing ac­cu­sa­tions from the Prime Min­is­ter that PNM had "boiled down like bha­gi" from ac­cusato­ry stance to probe seek­ing.

In a page from pre­de­ces­sor Bas­deo Pan­day who of­ten told peo­ple to take their ev­i­dence to the po­lice, the PM sent such to those quar­ters.With Row­ley be­ing hauled to Par­lia­ment's Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, PP's po­si­tion was re­in­forced with fur­ther state­ments at yes­ter­day's ral­ly, though dam­age con­trol be­came nec­es­sary when re­port of a "spy bug" in the DPP's of­fice broke on ral­ly­day, com­pound­ing "E-mail­gate" em­bar­rass­ment.

COP's par­lia­men­tary re­ac­tion ranged from ad­mit­ted blub­ber­ing (leader), blus­ter­ing the e-mails were mere "con­ver­sa­tions" (ex-leader), yet stand­ing be­hind the Gov­ern­ment (oth­er COP MPs). For­mer MSJ leader Er­rol Mc Leod avoid­ed the is­sue, but main­tained PP face by at­tack­ing for­mer MSJ chums en­gag­ing the for­mer PNM en­e­my, he said.

No­body was say­ing "set-up" on ei­ther side, though Row­ley's fail­ure to share the in­for­ma­tion with all col­leagues and the e-mails' dis­crep­an­cies have raised con­cerns in the PNM about whether he was vic­tim of such; and sim­i­lar­ly in PP, whether the Gov­ern­ment is a vic­tim of this al­so.

Con­sid­er­ing the weight of the sit­u­a­tion for both sides, the height of the al­leged par­ties whose e-mail ad­dress­es were used and the depth of the claims in­clud­ing "spy­bug" rev­e­la­tions, it should be prop­er­ly probed by in­de­pen­dent ex­perts of the rel­e­vant fields per­haps even be­yond the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and po­lice be­fore what is clear­ly a po­lit­i­cal sink­hole be­gins re­ceiv­ing vic­tims.

Swift ac­tion is need­ed to shed light on the is­sue which, if un­re­solved, en­sures the Gov­ern­ment no peace in­side and out­side Par­lia­ment for the 24 months of its term which the PM vows to see out. And that's with­out the im­pli­ca­tions of the im­pend­ing sit­u­a­tion(s) con­cern­ing Warn­er whose modus operan­di is well known to the UNC.

The sit­u­a­tion clouds PP's im­age at a time when the Gov­ern­ment hosts US and Chi­nese heads over com­ing days. Un­til prop­er­ly ex­plained, "E-mail­gate's" shad­ow on the cred­i­bil­i­ty, im­age and rep­u­ta­tion of lead­ers of both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion will make for an un­set­tled T&T with­in, and un­set­tling per­cep­tion of same with­out.

As well as the reper­cus­sions that flow from this.