Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists be­lieve the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) should be con­cerned and some­what wor­ried about the re­cep­tion Jack Warn­er is re­ceiv­ing from Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers.

Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath told Guardian Me­dia that Warn­er’s re­turn has the po­ten­tial to “reawak­en” UNC sup­port­ers who have be­come dis­il­lu­sioned with the par­ty.

“My per­son­al po­si­tion is sim­ply that Mr Warn­er’s pres­ence on the plat­form was to awak­en the dor­mant UNC sup­port­ers who would have fall­en by the way­side, those who don’t strong­ly sup­port the par­ty and prob­a­bly those who would not have gone out to vote on elec­tion day.

“His re­turn is not nec­es­sar­i­ly to win sup­port from out­side the UNC’s ranks, but rather to get the UNC sup­port­ers to turn out on elec­tion day,” he said

Dr Ra­goonath said Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions his­tor­i­cal­ly at­tract on­ly core par­ty sup­port­ers to come out to vote. In 2019, the vot­er turnout was 34.49 per cent.

“The UNC is at­tempt­ing to bring out all of their core sup­port­ers. If they can do that, there’s the like­li­hood that they could have a greater im­pact if the PNM is un­able to do so with its own sup­port base,” he added.

Dr Ra­goonath said the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence showed shades of the po­lit­i­cal mo­men­tum from the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion in 2010.

Mean­while, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad be­lieves if the Prime Min­is­ter was tuned in to the UNC’s ral­ly, he would re­alise that there is cause to be wor­ried, not on­ly go­ing in­to the Au­gust 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions but the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Dr Ram­per­sad told Guardian Me­dia that Warn­er can at­tract sup­port be­yond eth­nic lines and the per­ceived UNC In­do-Trinida­di­an sup­port base.

“What I saw was a re-en­er­gised UNC. He (Warn­er) is very pop­u­lar and ap­peals to the grass­roots, yet at the same time he can move in high cir­cles as for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent. So he has an amaz­ing ca­pac­i­ty to bridge that eth­nic and eco­nom­ic di­vide and I don’t think he lost that. So yes, the cross-eth­nic ap­peal is still there,” she said.

Dr Ram­per­sad said it seems as if the UNC was get­ting se­ri­ous about try­ing to win.

“I think the PNM is wor­ried and the rea­son I’m say­ing this is strict­ly based on facts and look­ing at the his­to­ry of pol­i­tics in Trinidad; when­ev­er there’s a coali­tion the PNM was de­feat­ed,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er, Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Warn­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar should not have split up in the first place. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Dr Mo­hammed said the Op­po­si­tion Leader of­ten talks about the “tan­gled web” that Dr Kei­th Row­ley weaves, but he said she ought to un­der­stand the hypocrisy of it all.

“She should lis­ten to her­self and lis­ten to what is com­ing out of her mouth be­fore she speaks be­cause the web that she weaved in 2013 is the one that caused Mr Warn­er to leave, which should have nev­er hap­pened giv­en his val­ue to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, giv­en his in­put and cred­i­bil­i­ty to the UNC and as he said his con­tri­bu­tion to the Cab­i­net.”

Don’t be­smirch

Man­dela’s name

But the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), a for­mer mem­ber of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion, said de­spite what it saw on Mon­day evening, the par­ty is res­olute that it will not work with the UNC again.

The par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah al­so strong­ly dis­agreed with Warn­er’s at­tempt to liken Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to Nel­son Man­dela.

“I re­al­ly think we need not to be­smirch the name of Nel­son Man­dela who put his life on the line, en­gaged in a con­flict with South Africa’s racist apartheid state, was in prison for life, spent 27 years on Robben Is­land do­ing hard labour. How can you com­pare that track record of strug­gle to free peo­ple with some­thing that the cur­rent leader of the Op­po­si­tion may or may not have done? It’s chalk and cheese,” Ab­du­lah said.