Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has faced many a test be­fore, win­ning some as spec­tac­u­lar­ly as she lost oth­ers.

How­ev­er, with the re­turn of Austin ‘Jack’ Warn­er to the UNC po­lit­i­cal fold on Mon­day night, the ju­ry is still out on whether her lat­est po­lit­i­cal gam­ble will in­deed pay off for her and the UNC.

With le­gal chal­lenges still hang­ing over Mr Warn­er’s head in con­nec­tion with the in­ter­na­tion­al FI­FA cor­rup­tion scan­dal, many have been left won­der­ing if Kam­la was in her right head when she de­cid­ed to wel­come Jack back home.

It was not so long ago that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar was made to pay a high po­lit­i­cal price in the full view of the pub­lic for her en­dorse­ment of Mr Warn­er.

In fact, it was with her bless­ing that he rose to be­come one of the most pow­er­ful min­is­ters in her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing its May 2010 vic­to­ry. Back then, as prime min­is­ter, she had sought to sig­nal how im­por­tant Mr Warn­er was to her by fight­ing force­ful­ly against then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's ob­jec­tions that Jack could not do so while still hold­ing the FI­FA vice-pres­i­den­cy po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, so pop­u­lar was Jack at the time, and his ap­proach so charis­mat­ic, that in many cas­es, he was more sought out by the me­dia for com­ment than even the prime min­is­ter.

This, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, led to rifts with­in the al­ready frag­ment­ed Cab­i­net that Kam­la had con­struct­ed with­out first en­sur­ing that old wounds were healed.

Just one year be­fore win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion, Jack had or­ches­trat­ed the re­moval of UNC big­wig Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan as Ch­agua­nas may­or, re­plac­ing him with neo­phyte Natasha Navas.

This trig­gered a feud that spilled over in­to the elec­tion cam­paign, with Ram­bachan telling re­porters at the time, he did not trust Mr Warn­er.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to bring the two men in­to the same Cab­i­net was an at­tempt to prove that un­der her lead­er­ship, uni­ty would pre­vail.

In­stead, she on­ly set the stage for pow­er strug­gles with­in the Cab­i­net, with Jack al­most al­ways seem­ing­ly com­ing out on top.

The rifts cre­at­ed fur­ther fac­tions with­in the par­ty that even­tu­al­ly saw UNC stal­warts step­ping away as Jack grew gi­gan­tic in the eyes of UNC sup­port­ers.

It lat­er came as no shock when Mr Warn­er re­signed as a UNC MP for Ch­agua­nas West in April 2013, on­ly to win back the seat un­der his new­ly formed In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, beat­ing the UNC by a mar­gin of 12,642 votes to 5,130.

His lat­est po­lit­i­cal come­back, there­fore, rais­es ques­tions about Kam­la’s end game for the UNC, one that can­not be eas­i­ly summed up with promis­es of Man­dela-type uni­ty and a "no tote" cam­paign.

What UNC sup­port­ers and the pub­lic saw on Mon­day were re­minders of Jack’s in­flu­ence and pop­u­lar­i­ty.

While tra­di­tion­al­ly the po­lit­i­cal leader is the last per­son to ar­rive at a ma­jor event, on Mon­day it was Jack who took that ho­n­our, en­ter­ing to thun­der­ous fan­fare and a hero-like wel­come af­ter Kam­la was al­ready seat­ed.

His ad­dress al­so gar­nered more re­ac­tion from the vis­i­bly en­er­gised crowd than the UNC leader’s, per­haps due to the nov­el­ty of his re­turn and Kam­la’s plea for the loud horns to cease dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion.

But it is Jack who is once again the cen­tre of at­ten­tion and poised to be­come the fo­cus of at­ten­tion on UNC plat­forms as the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions cam­paign pro­gress­es.

With his­to­ry in mind, how Kam­la in­tends to man­age Jack’s dy­namism over that of those who have sup­port­ed her faith­ful­ly in his ab­sence, will be in­ter­est­ing to watch.

Un­doubt­ed­ly for her, it will be no easy walk. Jack’s pop­u­lar­i­ty might re­sus­ci­tate many dor­mant UNC sup­port­ers but could very well have the ef­fect of dri­ving away the loy­al par­ty mem­bers who helped keep the par­ty to­geth­er af­ter his last march.