Gail Alexan­der

Jack Warn­er's In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) will re­main in­de­pen­dent and will be con­test­ing all 41 seats in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, Warn­er said on Wednes­day night.

He told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day he still main­tained his re­cent calls that all the Op­po­si­tion par­ties should join forces to fight the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) but in the ab­sence of that he was con­test­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly.

He said he would con­tin­ue to hold talks with the Al­liance of In­de­pen­dents (AI) and oth­er groups. He said the pol­i­tics in T&T was now so flu­id that de­ci­sions had to be made on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Two weeks ago, Warn­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Ch­aguara­mas march, on land is­sues, along­side Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, AI's Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith and MSJ's David Ab­du­lah.

Speak­ing at a Pierre Road, Char­lieville, meet­ing Warn­er said he nev­er thought that af­ter five years "Kam­la" would have to fight to win a gen­er­al elec­tion but, he said, "every Mon­day morn­ing" the PP was turn­ing the sod for schools and "build­ing more hos­pi­tals than it have pa­tients for."

How­ev­er the ILP will not be go­ing to the Cham­ber of Com­merce's po­lit­i­cal de­bate.

Warn­er told sup­port­ers: "In­stead of de­bat­ing, we will be walk­ing so put on your walk­ing shoes, put on your green (ILP) shirt. On Sun­day while oth­er par­ties will be in Man­dela Park (PNM) and Con­stan­tine Park (PP), we will be in church at an in­ter-faith ser­vice."

Con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day on last year's state­ment that he would not con­test his Ch­agua­nas West seat again, Warn­er said no de­ci­sion had as yet been made by ILP on who would con­test which seat.

On Row­ley's state­ment at a PNM fo­rum last Sun­day that he (Row­ley) would not have any bar­gain­ing or "horse-trad­ing" for po­si­tions in a PNM Gov­ern­ment and would not want peo­ple seek­ing posts on the ba­sis that their par­ty was keep­ing the Gov­ern­ment to­geth­er, Warn­er said:

"Any de­ci­sion that has to be made has to be made long be­fore elec­tion is held. I don't call it horse-trad­ing but it has to be done pru­dent­ly so that af­ter the elec­tion some­thing like what hap­pened with the COP won't oc­cur."