Sacha Wil­son

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er has re­mind­ed their de­trac­tors that in 1960, the late Dr Er­ic Williams had burnt sev­er­al im­por­tant doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, to sym­bol­ise a new way for­ward.

De­fend­ing his po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Warn­er said: "My dear friends, in pol­i­tics there are cer­tain times when sym­bol­i­cal­ly great peo­ple who are bring­ing out new move­ments have burnt doc­u­ments and last night, a great woman who is bring­ing out a great Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in gov­ern­ment tore up a man­i­festo to mark the dawn of a new era in this coun­try. "I want Jer­ry Lewis (Narace) to know what Kam­la did last night (Tues­day) was a great sym­bol of the past...A PNM past of failed promis­es," he said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was crit­i­cised by Narace for tear­ing up the PNM's man­i­festo at Gas­par­il­lo junc­tion on Tues­day night. De­scrib­ing the PNM's man­i­festo as a "pho­to al­bum," he re­mind­ed Narace that in 1960 Williams, the fa­ther of the na­tion, burnt sev­er­al doc­u­ments at Wood­ford Square on his march to Ch­aguara­mas.

Among the doc­u­ments burnt by Dr Williams, Warn­er said, were the 1941 Ch­aguara­mas least agree­ment, the 1956 T&T con­sti­tu­tion, a state­ment on Guyana writ­ten by Dr Rudranath Capildeo, the re­port of the Fed­er­al cap­i­tal site, the Tele­phone Or­di­nance of 1939 and six copies of the Trinidad Guardian. "Er­ic Williams, Er­ic Williams...and all Kam­la did is tear up a fool­ish man­i­festo," Warn­er said. "In Williams' bon­fire, those doc­u­ments which he burnt sym­bol­ised Williams re­jec­tion of the past...When he burnt those doc­u­ments, Williams said it was a sym­bol of mov­ing for­ward." He said if they had more than one copy of the man­i­festo that night, they would have torn it all up. Wad­ing in­to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who had called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to say what her stance was on abor­tion, he said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would not be dis­tract­ed by that "fool­ish­ness."

Over the past week, he said, their de­trac­tors had been say­ing things about Per­sad-Bisses­sar and him­self, but "talk is cheap." He, how­ev­er, sound­ed a warn­ing: "They could say what they want about Kam­la, but if any of them touch a sin­gle lock of Kam­la hair they touch my whole body!" Warn­er al­so said he was brought to tears when he heard Sub­has Pan­day de­fend­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar and him­self (Warn­er) on their plat­form. He said Pan­day was an ex­am­ple of a true team play­er.