Gail Alexan­der

Es­tranged UNC deputy leader Jack Warn­er in a scathing at­tack on UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day, last night, de­tailed a num­ber of ex­pens­es for Pan­day and his fam­i­ly which Warn­er claimed to have borne. Warn­er hit home on the Pan­day fam­i­ly as he launched his at­tack at Jer­ry Junc­tion in Pan­day's Cou­va North strong­hold af­ter open­ing a con­stituen­cy of­fice there. This, in the lat­est chap­ter of the bit­ter rift be­tween UNC's Pan­day hi­er­ar­chy and the break­away Ram­jack fac­tion that in­cludes Tabaquite MP Ramesh Ma­haraj and Ma­yaro MP Win­ston Pe­ters. Warn­er al­so hint­ed that Ch­agua­nas deputy may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar might soon "lose" his of­fice at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough. He warned last week that he would "go af­ter" Nages­sar since he al­lowed Pan­day to use his deputy may­or's of­fice at the bor­ough to meet Warn­er's Ch­agua­nas West con­stituents.

Last night, Warn­er promised his "new­ly-adopt­ed" Cou­va North con­stituents to serve them "in a way that you have nev­er been ser­viced for the last 33 years." Warn­er de­nied Pan­day's re­cent al­le­ga­tion that Warn­er "re­ceived" $30 mil­lion from some­one in the par­ty. He said: "If any man had ever giv­en me that kind of mon­ey I would have had to ac­count to the man for it and not to Pan­day! But even if what Bas is say­ing were to make any sense, why should a man give that kind of mon­ey to me and not to the leader?" Warn­er ad­mit­ted Pan­day's al­le­ga­tion has done "un­told dam­age" to his rep­u­ta­tion, both na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. "I have had cause to ex­plain this em­bar­rass­ment to my in­ter­na­tion­al friends and cor­po­ra­tions and they all have been dis­mis­sive of Bas' fool­ish­ness," he said. "But what has been the fi­nal straw for me has been Bas' in­fer­ence on a ra­dio pro­gramme on Mon­day that be­cause I of­fered fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to 54 re­trenched work­ers at Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion that I am a drug lord!

"Me! A man who spent over $3 mil­lion on Bas alone in 2007–pay­ing his le­gal bills, his in­ter­na­tion­al trav­els, pay­ing his court debt to Ken Gor­don, pay­ing for rental cars for his chil­dren, pay­ing for his com­put­ers and In­ter­net ser­vices at his home and the list goes on and on. "I nev­er want­ed to dis­close these things be­cause I con­sid­er them to be very pri­vate. But, tonight I feel pained, hurt and ag­griev­ed...How come all the mon­ey I have spent on him did not make me a drug lord at that time? "How come the $1 mil­lion bail I am hold­ing on my build­ing for his wife, Oma, for the last four years is not drug mon­ey? If I am a drug lord, as he has in­ferred, why does he not re­move his wife's bail from this drug lord? "How come all the mon­ey I have spent on him did not make me a drug lord at that time, but be­cause I have cho­sen to as­sist poor peo­ple and their fam­i­lies in Ch­agua­nas, I am a drug lord!?

"When I want­ed to help the Hin­du Cred­it Union de­pos­i­tors some months ago, he rushed to say that it is mafia mon­ey. When I gave nine schol­ar­ships to the chil­dren of for­mer sug­ar cane work­ers last month, he said I was us­ing par­ty funds though I have nev­er even been the par­ty trea­sur­er. He even ac­cused me of be­ing a PNM agent... but to ac­cuse me of be­ing a drug lord is the low­est of the lows." Warn­er said he had re­luc­tant­ly put the is­sue in lawyers' hands. His Eng­lish at­tor­ney Alan New­man, QC, ar­rives Tues­day to be­gin pro­ceed­ings by next Fri­day against Pan­day re­gard­ing the al­le­ga­tions. "I ask all on UNC's ex­ec­u­tive, who cher­ish their homes and their lit­tle 'kaka­da' in the bank to pub­licly dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves from Bas' reck­less­ness," Warn­er said.