On Fri­day, Jack Warn­er be­gan his po­lit­i­cal cam­paign in the by-elec­tion for a seat which the Speak­er of the House had not yet de­clared va­cant.The Speak­er must wait for a for­mal sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives which won't hap­pen un­til May 10, 2013, but Mr Warn­er, ap­par­ent­ly, is con­strained by noth­ing and has pro­ceed­ed vig­or­ous­ly to the cam­paign trail.

The Warn­er cam­paign is pro­ceed­ing al­most en­tire­ly on ego and per­son­al­i­ty, two sell­ing points that the for­mer Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and UNC par­ty chair­man clear­ly be­lieves pro­pel him above pet­ty triv­i­al­i­ties like be­ing nom­i­nat­ed for the can­di­da­cy by the UNC, a par­ty he claims to re­main com­plete­ly loy­al to.The full-page, full-colour ad­ver­tise­ments pro­mot­ing yes­ter­day's ral­ly por­tray Jack Warn­er in the type of ac­tion man su­per­heroic pose nor­mal­ly re­served for a Michael Bay film.

Up un­til Sun­day, de­spite strong and per­sis­tent ru­mours that the UNC would not con­sid­er him as a can­di­date and would in­stead field Vas­ant Bharath as its re­place­ment for the Ch­agua­nas West seat, the for­mer prince of Fi­fa was cam­paign­ing on the as­sump­tion that the par­ty would ral­ly in his wake and again fol­low the prow of his ag­gres­sive lead­er­ship.That, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is no longer guar­an­teed.

The Jack Warn­er of May 2013 is not the man who stood along­side Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in May 2010, whose very pres­ence at the pin­na­cle of the UNC lead­er­ship team spoke greater vol­umes for its claims of in­clu­sive­ness than any cam­paign rhetoric.That has pro­gres­sive­ly col­lapsed over the last few weeks as the Gor­dian knot of Mr Warn­er's fi­nan­cial deal­ings was un­rav­elled by Sir David Sim­mons, the first per­son in au­thor­i­ty to point an un­equiv­o­cal fin­ger at the for­mer Fi­fa VP and claim fraud.

As strands of po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty and op­por­tunism fray, whip­ping this way and that, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, af­ter pay­ing re­spect­ful ac­knowl­edge­ment on Mr Warn­er's de­par­ture, sug­gest­ed a will­ing­ness to con­test the seat.

Ap­par­ent­ly be­mused by the bac­cha­nal aris­ing from the still to be for­mal­ly va­cat­ed Ch­agua­nas West seat, PNM chair­man Franklin Khan promised that a PNM can­di­date would be se­lect­ed for a seat he ac­knowl­edges as "chal­leng­ing" for his par­ty but saw the fight for the seat as one to be con­test­ed be­tween Mr Warn­er and the UNC.

There seems lit­tle chance that the Prime Min­is­ter, af­ter ac­cept­ing Mr Warn­er's res­ig­na­tions last week "to save the par­ty," will sud­den­ly have a change of heart about him as a po­ten­tial can­di­date.Par­ty Whip Roodal Mooni­lal seems quite con­fi­dent that Jack Warn­er won't do any­thing to harm the par­ty, but would Mr Warn­er win­ning the Ch­agua­nas West seat as an in­de­pen­dent be tru­ly in­im­i­cal to its in­ter­ests?

So much of this feels like a naval bat­tle in its ear­li­est stages, the strat­e­gy and out­comes strong­ly de­pen­dent on the way the winds blow and the cur­rents flow. In this case, the forces in play are not com­ing from na­turethough. They are be­ing strong­ly in­flu­enced by hu­man na­ture and where the great­est po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est will be found.