Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day has chal­lenged es­tranged UNC MP Jack Warn­er to give up UNC's Ch­agua­nas West seat and fight a by-elec­tion for it against oust­ed Ch­agua­nas may­or Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan.

"If Jack Warn­er has the slight­est speck of in­tegri­ty he will re­sign that seat which he won on the UNC's tick­et and fight a by-elec­tion for it on his own and the UNC will put up Su­ruj (Ram­bachan) to fight him for it," Pan­day said. "If Warn­er de­cides to fight it on his own, it will prove he is not a cow­ard and that mon­ey can­not buy every­thing and if Win­ston Pe­ters and (Ramesh) Ma­haraj have any in­tegri­ty they will re­sign from their seats and try to win them on their own al­so."

He said the UNC had peo­ple who were pre­pared to fight Ma­haraj for Tabaquite.

Pan­day spoke as he pre­pared for yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting where he saw Warn­er for the first time since Ram­bachan was oust­ed from Bor­ough of­fice on Mon­day. Warn­er has claimed that rather than be­ing be­hind that ac­tion, he was "in front of it."

Con­gress of the Peo­ple's Gan­ga Singh al­so said he played a piv­otal role in it. Pan­day said yes­ter­day: "What they did for us on Mon­day has proven the Op­po­si­tion's point that they are in league with the PNM to de­stroy the Op­po­si­tion and when Warn­er, Pe­ters and Ma­haraj vot­ed for Gov­ern­ment bills re­cent­ly, they fur­ther con­firmed this since they have now giv­en the Gov­ern­ment pow­er to pass any bill they want in the House re­gard­less of how it af­fects the pub­lic.

"They don't seem to re­alise that their vin­dic­tive acts to get back at the UNC have com­pro­mised the na­tion­al in­ter­est more than any­thing," he said. "T&T is now in dan­ger of hav­ing (Prime Min­is­ter Patrick) Man­ning suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenge the Con­sti­tu­tion with bills and have his ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­den­cy for life and any oth­er changes he wants be­cause they are vot­ing with Gov­ern­ment now. "Those who talk about pro­tect­ing the pub­lic's hu­man rights should have known that they are ex­pos­ing those rights to be­ing abused when they vote with Gov­ern­ment."

Pan­day who said the trio's ac­tion had cre­at­ed a dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ment for T&T, al­so said: "This goes be­yond in­ter­nal par­ty mat­ters since it stands to af­fect the coun­try. "Those gen­tle­men may want to ac­knowl­edge the dan­ger they have ex­posed T&T to. But the pub­lic will know those who have be­trayed them." Pan­day said he ex­pect­ed "red her­rings" to be put in­to the pub­lic do­main to di­vert at­ten­tion from the sit­u­a­tion.

"We fought to avoid the treach­ery of these fel­las but now the coun­try is in dan­ger and any spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty bill that Gov­ern­ment may want to pass and may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be good for the peo­ple, may get pas­sage be­cause of Jack, Ramesh and Pe­ters," he said. When UNC's ex­ec­u­tive meets to­day, agen­da items in­clude a re­port on the trio's break­ing of par­ty ranks.

In re­sponse to Warn­er's de­c­la­ra­tion that he would legal­ly chal­lenge any sus­pen­sion/ex­pul­sion from the UNC, Pan­day said: "Warn­er should not an­tic­i­pate what UNC's ex­ec­u­tive will do." On Singh's in­volve­ment in Ram­bachan's oust­ing, Pan­day al­so said: "If COP's leader says he didn't sanc­tion or know about it and COP's chair­man says he knew about it and in­for­mal­ly agreed to it, don't the leader and chair­man talk? Are there two COP fac­tions or is there a par­ty there at all?"

No re­ply from Jack

UNC MP Jack Warn­er has not replied to UNC Leader Bas­deo Pan­day's chal­lenge to fight for the Ch­agua­nas West seat on his own in a con­test with Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan. Warn­er, in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, did not re­ply to re­peat­ed cell­phone calls dur­ing the half-hour tea break or to an ear­li­er note–sent to him dur­ing Par­lia­ment–to ob­tain com­ment on state­ments against him from UNC mem­bers.

How­ev­er, Ram­bachan said he would be quite will­ing to fight Warn­er for the seat. "Cer­tain­ly if this is what is nec­es­sary to bring Ch­agua­nas West back in­to the UNC's hands– why not?," Ram­bachan said.

Asked about the fact that Warn­er had im­ple­ment­ed projects and fa­cil­i­ties for Ch­agua­nas West with his own mon­ey and how this would af­fect Ram­bachan's chances, Ram­bachan said, "The big­ger ques­tion is, has he be­trayed the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West? One must al­so con­sid­er that Ch­agua­nas West was in my bor­ough so I know the area well."