Gail Alexan­der

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar mulls over the per­son­al im­pli­ca­tions of Mon­day's dev­as­tat­ing loss in the Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion, views in her ad­min­is­tra­tion vary on whether to bring vic­to­ri­ous In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er back in­to the Gov­ern­ment.UNC MP Win­ston Pe­ters, To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) leader Ash­worth Jack and the PM's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day favoured Warn­er's re-en­try in­to the part­ner­ship.

But the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) has main­tained a hard­line po­si­tion against him, and oth­er UNC MPs have de­ferred dis­cus­sion to to­day's Cab­i­net ses­sion and a UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing.The Cab­i­net ses­sion will fo­cus on the by-elec­tion re­sults and where the PP goes from here, a spokesman said yes­ter­day. This fol­lows sev­er­al hours of in­tense de­bate un­til 1 am yes­ter­day af­ter Mon­day's by-elec­tion re­sults, in which Warn­er copped 12,642 votes to UNC can­di­date Khadi­jah Ameen's 5,129.

The part­ner­ship is seek­ing an­swers ahead of Fri­day's open­ing of the Fourth Ses­sion of the Tenth Par­lia­ment, when Warn­er takes his new oath as an MP and his place in Par­lia­ment again.Warn­er's ILP be­gins plan­ning fu­ture de­vel­op­ments this af­ter­noon.

Af­ter the re­sults, UNC of­fi­cials said, the Prime Min­is­ter and her team met for sev­er­al hours. Talks fo­cused on whether the out­come was a per­son­al in­dict­ment against the Gov­ern­ment, the PM or their gov­er­nance in gen­er­al, and whether peo­ple vot­ed for Warn­er or sim­ply against the Gov­ern­ment.Sources said the Prime Min­is­ter is ex­am­in­ing whether the out­come is an in­dict­ment on her per­son­al­ly, since she spear­head­ed Ameen's cam­paign.

It was agreed part­ner­ship lead­ers must meet for "se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions," as called for by the COP im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Mon­day's re­sults.Among the is­sues dis­cussed on Mon­day were al­ter­na­tives and op­tions now open to the part­ner­ship. Some of­fi­cials be­lieve one of these is to bring Warn­er back in­to the Gov­ern­ment, which he had said he want­ed if he had won the seat. Dur­ing the cam­paign, how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter had re­fused to con­sid­er do­ing so.

UNC deputy lead­ers, Drs Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Roodal Mooni­lal, didn't an­swer calls yes­ter­day. Nor did Trans­port Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said he couldn't com­ment.Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith said it would be pre­ma­ture to make a state­ment be­fore part­ner­ship of­fi­cials had dis­cussed it.UNC MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, who con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed Warn­er dur­ing his cam­paign against the PP, when asked about bring­ing Warn­er in­to the Gov­ern­ment, said: "I'm all for uni­fy­ing the whole thing.

"There's on­ly one Op­po­si­tion. So we should bring every­one in­to the part­ner­ship who wants to come in so we can strength­en it against them and make it what we pro­fessed it would be when we en­tered of­fice."Asked if it would be cred­i­ble, since the PM had shot down Warn­er's idea of join­ing the PP dur­ing the cam­paign, Pe­ters said: "In pol­i­tics things can be very ne­go­tiable. When you're on the hus­tings, you say and do things, but com­pro­mis­es can al­so be reached that as long as the cli­mate is right. So of course it can hap­pen."

TOP leader Ash­worth Jack said bring­ing Warn­er back was "an is­sue we all have to dis­cuss.""He's al­ways been a valu­able mem­ber of the team and whether we like it or not, what he's done is a first in this part of the world. He want­ed a new man­date and the peo­ple gave that to him. We all have a lot to learn from the democ­ra­cy at play here."

He said he was sure the PP might have no choice but to ac­cept Warn­er, but it was some­thing no one leader could de­cide on, since lead­ers weren't the or­gan­i­sa­tion. He said he would talk to his par­ty on the mat­ter.Asked if PP lead­ers need­ed to meet on the mat­ter, Jack said a meet­ing was "al­ways nec­es­sary."

He said: "I want to con­grat­u­late Warn­er on his vic­to­ry. It's a red-let­ter day for T&T. It puts to rest in my mind the is­sue of race as it re­lates to the or­di­nary cit­i­zen tran­scend­ing the is­sue of colour and creed. I think all lead­ers in T&T could do well to learn from that, in­clud­ing those in To­ba­go."Jack said the PM didn't need to step down or call a gen­er­al elec­tion as a re­sult of the by-elec­tion."This is a time, how­ev­er, for in­tro­spec­tion," he added.

NJAC deputy leader Em­bau Mo­heni said while he had a per­son­al po­si­tion on the is­sue, he wouldn't pre-empt any meet­ing on it.COP deputy leader Lin­coln Dou­glas, how­ev­er, said while the COP would con­sid­er all op­tions and pos­si­bil­i­ties, the COP had put its po­si­tion on Warn­er on the ta­ble be­fore."We'll con­sult mem­bers and see where it goes from here," he said, "but the par­ty po­si­tion is fair­ly clear."

Dou­glas, say­ing he was stay­ing with his par­ty, added he sup­port­ed the COP's call for an ur­gent meet­ing of lead­ers."We be­lieve the tenets of the part­ner­ship have to be ex­am­ined very care­ful­ly. We can no longer con­tin­ue do­ing busi­ness as usu­al. We must ex­am­ine where we go from here. The by-elec­tion re­sults rep­re­sent a strong re­flec­tion on how T&T is think­ing, so it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al," Dou­glas said.

"We al­so have to re­flect care­ful­ly on part­ner­ship lead­er­ship, specif­i­cal­ly, how lead­ing is done in this coali­tion. It's not a sin­gle par­ty."Dou­glas said COP MPs will cau­cus be­fore to­day's Cab­i­net to speak from a uni­fied po­si­tion.