Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Like it or not in­cum­bent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er is an as­set to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP). This is the strong view of po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath as he wad­ed in on the elec­tion war cur­rent­ly brew­ing as the count­down to the in­ter­nal elec­tions draws near.

In fact, Ra­goonath told Sun­day Guardian that while some did not want to ad­mit that Warn­er con­tin­ues to be a "ma­jor play­er" in the UNC, he said they must be mind­ful of the vi­tal role the Ch­agua­nas West MP played in the PP be­ing el­e­vat­ed to gov­ern­ment. "The Prime Min­is­ter, as well as oth­er mem­bers in the Gov­ern­ment, both with­in the Con­gress of the Peo­ple and UNC, know they won their seats be­cause of Warn­er's in­ter­ven­tion. Quite frankly, you must give Jack his jack­et and praise where praise is due.

"He was re­spon­si­ble for them win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tions. The Prime Min­is­ter knows ful­ly well the PP could not have won the elec­tion had it not been for Warn­er," Ra­goonath stat­ed. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that while op­po­nents vy­ing for the chair­man­ship showed that democ­ra­cy was alive with­in the po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Ra­goonath said a mixed mes­sage was al­so be­ing sent.

Ra­goonath ex­plained: "He (Warn­er) is quite right when he said the hi­er­ar­chy is throw­ing their weight in sup­port of the oth­er can­di­dates and not in sup­port of him. While he is some­what in the 'dog house' the Prime Min­is­ter has not con­demned her min­is­ter, bear­ing in mind all the al­le­ga­tions that have sur­faced.

"He is a trump card for them and they can­not af­ford to throw him out. If the peo­ple turn their backs on him on­ly then they would be able to get rid of him." And, Ra­goonath said, while some may think Warn­er got a "spoke in his wheel" by the slash­ing of his port­fo­lio, he said the min­is­ter still com­mands at­ten­tion.

"While some do not want to ad­mit it they still con­sid­er him as hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant pow­er that can ei­ther make or break the PP. Warn­er is def­i­nite­ly an as­set to the par­ty. If he is re­moved there is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be reper­cus­sions," Ra­goonath stat­ed.

Works Min­is­ter un­fazed

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian mere hours be­fore launch­ing his cam­paign in Cen­tral late yes­ter­day be­fore hun­dreds of sup­port­ers, Warn­er said he was un­fazed by his op­po­nents. "My work speaks for it­self, so I have noth­ing to jus­ti­fy to any­one. I would not waste my time re­spond­ing to the new­com­ers, it is not worth it. All I would say is that for years the UNC was stag­nant and I was the man that was re­spon­si­ble for mov­ing Bas­deo Pan­day as leader of the UNC; it is no se­cret, every­one knows that. So I would let the peo­ple judge for them­selves," Warn­er said.