The pro­ject­ed re­turn of Mr Austin “Jack” Warn­er to pol­i­tics and in­to the arms of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who he claimed to have had a ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for turn­ing her in­to “Queen Kam­la” and prime min­is­ter, is re­flec­tive of the state and na­ture of par­ty pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day’s state­ment about “pol­i­tics hav­ing a moral­i­ty of its own” is once again prov­ing to be true. It’s a sim­ple but ac­cu­rate de­scrip­tion that pol­i­tics and politi­cians can­not be judged on the ba­sis of clear and hon­est think­ing and ac­tions. The na­tion has come to un­der­stand that meth­ods used by politi­cians to at­tract sup­port have noth­ing to do with ca­pac­i­ty, qual­i­fi­ca­tions and achieve­ment record.

Mr Pan­day’s de­f­i­n­i­tion al­so means that the ac­qui­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal pow­er is all about per­son­al glo­ry and to serve the needs of spe­cial in­ter­ests: the tribes and the fi­nanciers who as­sist them to win of­fice.

The as­so­ci­a­tion and his­to­ry in and out of of­fice be­tween Mr Warn­er, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and se­nior mem­bers of the UNC is well-known and pub­licly played out on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in lurid and vul­gar “cus­souts”. It would take ten ed­i­to­ri­als to list and de­scribe them all.

Just to say that ul­ti­mate­ly and af­ter sev­er­al in­di­ca­tions of Mr Warn­er be­ing sought af­ter for al­le­ga­tions of cor­rupt con­duct as a mem­ber of the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, FI­FA, the for­mer prime min­is­ter sum­moned the will to fire her bene­fac­tor with the urg­ing “to go clear your name”.

But this was af­ter then prime min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­sist­ed for sev­er­al months the many urg­ings from with­in and with­out to dis­pense of her po­lit­i­cal bene­fac­tor; she hav­ing made it clear that FI­FA’s op­er­a­tions had noth­ing to do with her gov­ern­ment.

The fired min­is­ter’s re­sponse reached down to the worst ex­am­ples of gut­ter pol­i­tics imag­in­able, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions about the per­son­al life of the then prime min­is­ter. On the cam­paign trail, the acid­i­ty be­tween the two was as flesh-eat­ing as a hu­man who found him­self in a riv­er of pi­ra­nhas.

To­day, pure­ly in the quest for pow­er the two are re­port­ed­ly re­turn­ing to some form of al­liance.

Has your for­mer min­is­ter cleared his name of the al­le­ga­tions to your sat­is­fac­tion, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar?

Mr Warn­er, what of your al­leged de­ceit, lazi­ness, in­com­pe­tence and more of your for­mer boss: has she con­vinced you of a re­birth? Is she now not like­ly to dump you again when it suits her con­ve­nience? Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, if you were to once again be­come prime min­is­ter, will you have your at­tor­ney gen­er­al de­liv­er Mr Warn­er in­to the hands of the Amer­i­can le­gal sys­tem, which is thirsty to get him in­to their ju­ris­dic­tion to make him an­swer for his al­leged cor­rup­tion?

Be­yond all of those is­sues and more, how can it be ex­pect­ed that such a po­lit­i­cal union will bring in­tegri­ty and ac­com­plish­ment to a par­ty in gov­ern­ment?

Dur­ing its pe­ri­od of po­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance, NJAC held as a core tenet of po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion the prin­ci­ple that how a par­ty of in­di­vid­u­als per­form in op­po­si­tion so too will they when in of­fice.

To deep­en the tragedy is the fact that there are many in the so­ci­ety and poli­ty who have been dis­en­chant­ed with the rule of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.