Gail Alexan­der

Es­tranged UNC MP Jack Warn­er has gone from the now-de­funct "Ram­jack-G" fac­tion to "Kam­jack-G," via his new al­liance with lead­er­ship as­pi­rant Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day. And UNC MP Sub­has Pan­day has warned: "MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who Warn­er has dropped like a hot pota­to, should know by now that with friends like Warn­er, you don't need en­e­mies...I say to oth­ers now in Ma­haraj's pre­vi­ous po­si­tion, be­ware!" Mooni­lal and Pan­day were among sev­er­al UNC MPs who said they were not sur­prised that Warn­er was sup­port­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar's bid to wrest the lead­er­ship from in­cum­bent Bas­deo Pan­day. Pan­day, in Lon­don, did not re­ply to cell­phone calls yes­ter­day.

Warn­er, who is con­test­ing the post of chair­man–which Pan­day al­so holds–de­clared his sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Wednes­day, deem­ing her "his sis­ter...." "We were not sur­prised, we had a sense that would have been a nat­ur­al oc­cur­rence," Mooni­lal said. "The on­ly oth­er mat­ter of in­ter­est is that Mr (Ramesh) Lawrence Ma­haraj is now out­side in the grave­yard since Mr Warn­er has gone from Ram­jack-G to Kam­jack-G. It's the first time Ram has been ban­ished since the holy Ra­mayan." Sub­has Pan­day said: "Jack took Ramesh for the longest ride in his­to­ry, and then gave him a high fall. "Jack used Ramesh to mash up the UNC and now Jack has dropped him...That is some­thing for every­one–from Jack's new friends to UNC vot­ers–to pon­der on," he added.

UNC MP Kelvin Ram­nath said: "Warn­er's sup­port of Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­pears to have ob­vi­ous­ly been some­thing that was pre-arranged. "I said yes­ter­day that I feared he was us­ing her so it comes as no sur­prise that he's de­clared his sup­port," he said. "I be­lieve to­tal­ly that she is be­ing spon­sored by Warn­er. Warn­er has been the one who has been sup­port­ing her in the first in­stance." MP Vas­ant Bharath said: "No one should be sur­prised...Mr Warn­er has con­tin­u­al­ly jumped from horse to horse de­pend­ing on which one he be­lieves will reach the fin­ish­ing line first. "I wouldn't be sur­prised if he jumps again to some­one else if Per­sad-Bisses­sar's chances waned in the next few weeks," he added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day that Warn­er was not among her fi­nanciers. "In fact, I have not spo­ken to Jack up to now," she said. She said fi­nanc­ing for her elec­tion cam­paign was com­ing from "fam­i­ly, friends, sup­port­ers and fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties." Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ues cam­paign­ing with a meet­ing at Bar­rack­pore East Sec­ondary School on Mon­day. She al­so holds a toy-dis­tri­b­u­tion dri­ve through var­i­ous ar­eas this week­end. Her cam­paign team said yes­ter­day that her cam­paign slo­gan was "Vote for Kam­la be­cause we de­serve bet­ter." Sources close to Warn­er said yes­ter­day that Warn­er was like­ly to be on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's slate.

Ma­haraj re­sponds: UNC lead­er­ship con­tes­tant Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day that Jack Warn­er's sup­port of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will not af­fect his re­la­tion­ship with him. Ma­haraj said: "He re­mains my friend. He's en­ti­tled to ex­er­cise his con­sti­tu­tion­al right. But Mr Warn­er knows I have stat­ed to him that I'm com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the UNC base re­mains with the UNC and we must have ac­com­mo­da­tion and uni­ty."