Gail Alexan­der

Es­tranged UNC deputy leader Jack Warn­er is pre­pared to fight Bas­deo Pan­day for the post of UNC leader in par­ty elec­tions and Warn­er in­tends to take le­gal ac­tion–if nec­es­sary–to halt the elec­tion to en­sure his Ram­jack team can par­tic­i­pate. The team is al­so mov­ing ahead with plans for its own con­gress on No­vem­ber 29 at Saith Park, Ch­agua­nas, where an in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive will be formed. Af­ter a meet­ing of the Ram­jack team at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya yes­ter­day, Warn­er con­firmed for the first time that he would fight Pan­day.

He said he had been pre­pared to con­test the post of UNC chair­man. But Warn­er said he would con­test Pan­day's lead­er­ship post if he had to. Warn­er and Ram­jack mem­bers Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith and Sylvester Ramquar list­ed sev­er­al grounds which they said could make the planned Jan­u­ary 24, 2010, elec­tion il­le­gal. Warn­er has been sum­moned to ap­pear be­fore UNC's new dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee to­mor­row to an­swer charges against him. He said he would be out of T&T, but would be rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Om Lal­la. Warn­er ques­tioned the le­gal sta­tus of the new 11-mem­ber dis­ci­pli­nary team, say­ing a UNC con­gress had not been called to of­fi­cial­ly rat­i­fy the team as was re­quired by par­ty law.

He al­so said he be­lieved the dis­ci­pli­nary team's re­port–ex­pect­ed in No­vem­ber–was be­ing timed to pos­si­bly ex­pel him and oth­ers from the par­ty and pre­vent them from con­test­ing UNC's Jan­u­ary elec­tion. Warn­er said he in­tend­ed to deal with that. Grif­fith and Ramquar not­ed that the UNC's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing had not had a quo­rum in two weeks and the meet­ing at which the Jan­u­ary elec­tion date was pro­posed, lacked a quo­rum. There­fore, they said, the pro­posed elec­tion date was il­le­gal. Al­so con­firm­ing le­gal ac­tion if nec­es­sary, Warn­er added: "You can­not have elec­tions with a flawed list that will make the Afghanistan elec­tion look like a piece of cake." "That (UNC) elec­tion will be on the 35th of Nev­er-em­ber," added Ma­yaro MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters.

Warn­er said he would con­tin­ue links with the Con­gress of the Peo­ple–af­ter the ap­pear­ance of that par­ty's leader Win­ston Dook­er­an on his (Warn­er's) plat­form yes­ter­day–and is link­ing with NAR leader Car­son Charles and DPTT leader Steve Al­varez, as well as oth­er non-po­lit­i­cal groups.