If me­dia re­ports are cor­rect, it seems that the cit­i­zens of Ch­agua­nas West are voic­ing an ear­ly de­sire to have Jack Warn­er re­turn as their rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Par­lia­ment and Warn­er seems ea­ger to ac­quire the of­fice that he just re­cent­ly sur­ren­dered.

This call may seem in­ex­plic­a­ble to many on­look­ers. In one week Warn­er vol­un­tar­i­ly re­lin­quished the of­fice tri­ad of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West and chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. He did this as a "show of in­tegri­ty" and in keep­ing with "the high­est tra­di­tions" our par­lia­men­tary sys­tem.

On­look­ers would ask the ques­tion: what has changed be­tween the time of res­ig­na­tion and the present that would cause Warn­er's ap­par­ent about turn? On­look­ers would al­so think that Warn­er's ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est in the Ch­agua­nas West seat and his sup­port­ers' ap­par­ent will­ing­ness to have him re­turn, de­spite the se­ri­ous unan­swered ques­tions about his in­tegri­ty, rep­re­sent cause for se­ri­ous con­cern in the de­vel­op­ment in our pol­i­tics.

The cry of the cit­i­zens of Ch­agua­nas West must be un­der­stood be­fore it can be con­demned. The cry has lit­tle to do with is­sues of in­tegri­ty and much to do with rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It is a fact that this coun­try is long over­due for lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form. There ex­ists a se­ri­ous and deep­en­ing dis­con­nect be­tween the peo­ple and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Par­lia­ment.

Par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it is felt, do not have enough time, car­ing or re­sources to ad­e­quate­ly de­liv­er the much-need­ed ba­sic ser­vices to their con­stituents. Re­form is need­ed to fa­cil­i­tate a more ef­fi­cient and tar­get­ed sat­is­fac­tion of con­stituents' needs. More re­sources must be giv­en di­rect­ly to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies so that they can di­rect­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly ad­dress the con­cerns of their res­i­dents.

Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who are al­so Cab­i­net min­is­ters have very lit­tle time to meet their con­stituents, lis­ten to their pleas for as­sis­tance and pro­vide re­lief. Very few MPs can get to their con­stituen­cy of­fice at 4 am to meet the peo­ple and few­er are able to muster the re­sources that Warn­er ap­par­ent­ly had at his dis­pos­al.

Ch­agua­nas West seems to be hap­py with the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that they have re­ceived over the last three years and ap­pear to be afraid of sur­ren­der­ing that for some oth­er un­known en­ti­ty. The arm­chair politi­cian might con­clude that the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West are so jad­ed by our "politricks" that they pre­fer an al­leged white-col­lar crim­i­nal who ad­dress­es their needs than a squeaky-clean MP who can­not.

As we ap­proach nom­i­na­tion day and the by-elec­tion, how­ev­er, I have faith in the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West. I have faith that they will con­clude that while Warn­er has been the best rep­re­sen­ta­tive they could ever hope for, it would be in their and the coun­try's best in­ter­est to al­low him time to prop­er­ly ad­dress and re­solve the in­tegri­ty is­sues which led him to un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly re­lin­quish his var­i­ous of­fices.

I trust that the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas-West would see that de­spite Warn­er's ap­par­ent de­vot­ed ser­vice, he re­mains an un­at­trac­tive role mod­el for their chil­dren as long as those in­tegri­ty is­sues re­main un­re­solved. I trust that the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West would re­alise that Warn­er, with­out the pow­er and re­sources of Fi­fa and min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice, would be great­ly hand­i­capped in his abil­i­ty to per­form the mir­a­cles of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that he once did.

Last­ly, I sin­cere­ly trust that Warn­er would soon re­alise that while yes­ter­day was yes­ter­day and to­day is to­day, slow­ly but sure­ly our so­ci­ety is ma­tur­ing and in the eyes of even the most diehard of sup­port­ers, yes­ter­day's un­re­solved in­tegri­ty ques­tions must se­vere­ly erode his elec­tabil­i­ty to­day.

Lar­ry N. Lal­la