GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC front­lin­er Jack Warn­er says he will be re­spond­ing “ful­ly, firm­ly and com­plete­ly” tonight to claims made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about him at a PNM meet­ing in San­gre Grande on Tues­day.

Warn­er said yes­ter­day that his sting­ing re­sponse will be com­ing as he cam­paigned with the UNC in Moru­ga.

While he held back on the bulk of his re­sponse, Warn­er ac­cused the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader of be­ing des­per­ate. “What the Prime Min­is­ter has claimed sim­ply shows the lev­el of des­per­a­tion on his part and by ex­ten­sion his PNM par­ty in this Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions—but more on that in Ari­ma. He had his say yes­ter­day, I’m en­ti­tled to mine (to­day),” Warn­er said.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had claimed that Warn­er was back with the UNC in a bid to make a deal to pre­vent his ex­tra­di­tion from T&T.

Speak­ing dur­ing a “Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter” seg­ment in San­gre Grande, Row­ley said it was a tra­di­tion that in elec­tion week, the PNM must be in San­gre Grande and the par­ty was proud to rep­re­sent San­gre Grande in the Par­lia­ment and would be even proud­er to have ma­jor­i­ty con­trol of its cor­po­ra­tion on Mon­day (for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions).

Isha Ali, of North West San­gre Grande, not­ing that UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had brought back Warn­er, asked how some­one with ex­tra­di­tion is­sues could be in pol­i­tics.

Row­ley urged the PNM faith­ful not to be wor­ried by Warn­er’s re­turn.

“Let’s not be trou­bled by the res­ur­rec­tion of Jack Warn­er. All you’re see­ing is the shock­ing re­ver­sal of po­si­tions be­tween Mr Warn­er, the UNC and its leader boils down to one sim­ple thing—Jack Warn­er has some se­ri­ous ex­tra­di­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, he wants to be with peo­ple who’d make a deal that he wouldn’t be ex­tra­dit­ed.”

In fact, Row­ley said if his sus­pi­cions were cor­rect, the sit­u­a­tion could be even worse than the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co.

“So, from the time he’s able to make that deal—‘Sec­tion 35’ you could call it—as you know what the (PP Gov­ern­ment’s) Sec­tion 34 was: Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar us­ing the Par­lia­ment to amend a clause in a law so peo­ple with ex­tra­di­tion prob­lems would es­cape court in the US. So, Jack Warn­er has the same prob­lem. So, who you’ll ex­pect him to run to, who’ll strike a deal with him ... they’ve done it be­fore and what you see­ing there is them at­tempt­ing to do it again,” he said.

“Ig­nore Jack Warn­er but keep your eye on the UNC that’s pre­pared to make that kind of deal,” Row­ley added.

Row­ley al­leged that among the out­go­ing San­gre Grande UNC coun­cil­lors, one had been ar­rest­ed and two oth­ers are of in­ter­est to po­lice for “skull­dug­gery with the lit­tle mon­ey you have in San­gre Grande ... what you want dem (back) for? To go back and hide their tracks to con­tin­ue their mis­con­duct and shame­less be­hav­iour?”

Row­ley was al­so asked by Shel­ton Lewis how he was cop­ing with the slew of at­tacks and state­ments against him.

Row­ley said he is blessed with a sup­port­ive fam­i­ly he is proud of. He said he had been in pub­lic life for many decades and it seems to be get­ting worse. He said he has worked with politi­cians like Ho­choy Charles, Bas­deo Pan­day, Sel­by Wil­son, Kelvin Ram­nath—peo­ple he was on the op­po­site side of, “But we’d at least have had a drink and talked to­geth­er.”

“But what’s hap­pen­ing to­day,” he added, “is the poi­so­nous ha­tred that re­placed ca­ma­raderie in the Par­lia­ment. You see it in the nas­ti­est of per­son­al at­tacks as the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion of these peo­ple be­lieve this ‘knock-out punch’, slan­der of peo­ple and mark-bussing will de­stroy peo­ple.”

He added none of his min­is­ters were un­der po­lice probe for fraud and he be­lieved this left some peo­ple both­ered.

Row­ley urged the area to do in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions what it did in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Warn­er is ex­pect­ed to be among the speak­ers at a UNC meet­ing tonight in Ari­ma.