Gail Alexan­der

Last Sat­ur­day’s re­union be­tween Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and for­mer In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Austin Jack Warn­er, who had not spo­ken for ten years, has re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back from par­ty chair­man Dave Tan­coo and oth­er par­ty front lin­ers.

How­ev­er, for­mer UNC MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al says while she was hap­py to see Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Warn­er re­con­nect af­ter so many years, she is not con­vinced it was gen­uine uni­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly made a call for uni­ty be­tween the UNC, oth­er op­po­si­tion par­ties, and peo­ple neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment.

Warn­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­con­nect­ed at the “I Love Cho­ka” fete at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya. They hadn’t spo­ken to each oth­er since he re­signed from her Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2013.

There had been bit­ter­ness be­tween the two, but in an in­ter­view last year, Warn­er said he had for­giv­en Per­sad-Bisses­sar and would sup­port her as she was the “less­er of the two evils” and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was “bad news.”

Com­ment­ing on this de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “In the hard times Trinidad and To­ba­go has had and in to­day’s world of so many neg­a­tives, the pos­i­tiv­i­ty demon­strat­ed by those two peo­ple last Sat­ur­day was wel­comed, as it showed they were will­ing—and big enough—to put aside their dif­fer­ences, stand to­geth­er again and work for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­est.”

UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Roodal Mooni­lal added: “A foun­da­tion prin­ci­ple of the UNC is na­tion­al uni­ty. It’s not on­ly the rai­son d’etre of the par­ty but the sin qua non of na­tion­al sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. No one should dare ques­tion the goal of uni­ty.”

But Ram­di­al is wait­ing to see what hap­pens next.

“While I was hap­py to see them to­geth­er af­ter so long be­ing apart, I re­main un­con­vinced. I be­lieve it was a pho­to op and a pap­pyshow,” Ram­di­al said.

“I will on­ly be con­vinced it’s gen­uine uni­ty when I see re­al talks on at UNC head­quar­ters and there­after see an amal­ga­ma­tion mov­ing for­ward to­geth­er. Un­til then, to me, it’s just a front.”

But oth­er UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers said the re­sponse to the lead­ers’ “lime” was so good that it sur­prised some peo­ple.

“But it’s a good ex­am­ple that while these two lead­ers had their is­sues and bit­ter­ness, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar em­braced Jack and wel­comed him back to con­ver­sa­tions show­ing her call for uni­ty is gen­uine,” one ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber said.

“It was as easy as mak­ing a step for­ward and any­one else who is in­ac­tive and want­ed to re­turn could have done it. Jack seems to have made the ef­fort to at­tend the fete and it flowed from there. Fuad (Khan) or any of the oth­ers could have done some­thing like that. But al­though Fuad made his uni­ty call, he didn’t at­tend the Con­gress where he want­ed it de­bat­ed.”

Warn­er said he had been hap­py to re­con­nect with his for­mer po­lit­i­cal col­league and was awed and hum­bled by the “ab­solute­ly and to­tal­ly fan­tas­tic, pos­i­tive” feed­back he had re­ceived.

Peo­ple who were with Warn­er and Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the event last Sat­ur­day, said Warn­er had made his po­si­tion clear and the sit­u­a­tion was evolv­ing.

UNC will be meet­ing an­oth­er group this week and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions on Fri­day.

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith had no com­ment on the de­vel­op­ment with Warn­er. He al­so main­tained his “no com­ment” po­si­tion on the UNC’s uni­ty call. Sources close to Grif­fith said he is be­ing “very strate­gic and tac­ti­cal.”

PNM of­fi­cials, mean­while, have heaped scorn on the Warn­er/Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­con­nec­tion as un­trust­wor­thy. Cit­ing Warn­er’s fight against US ex­tra­di­tion on FI­FA cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions, they ac­cused the UNC of be­ing des­per­ate.