I would have re­spond­ed to hun­dreds of calls and mes­sages over the past cou­ple of days from for­mer con­stituents, ac­quain­tances and friends, all ask­ing the same ques­tion: “You go­ing back too?” to which I re­spond­ed, “I nev­er left.” It is in­ter­est­ing that those who do not dis­play blind loy­al­ty and pri­ori­tise “coun­try be­fore par­ty” are seen as “hav­ing gone some­where”. Any­way, last Mon­day’s grand un­veil­ing of “Kam­Jack” 2.0 along with NTA’s Gary Grif­fith did in­deed ex­cite the UNC mem­ber­ship and per­haps en­cour­aged some dor­mant mem­bers to re­ac­ti­vate their in­ter­est in par­ty pol­i­tics. This would seem to be an in­ter­nal fren­zy, how­ev­er.

In par­ty gath­er­ings, it is hard to see the for­est for the trees, and to pre­dict a UNC vic­to­ry in this LGE based on the re­turn of two “prodi­gal sons” is fool­hardy. Al­so, “The Chil­dren” of the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader would come to re­alise that they may not be as in­dis­pens­able as pre­vi­ous­ly thought and those who would have bran­dished swords for Jack and Gary would have had to sheath them and make their way down the ta­ble for their serv­ings of hum­ble pie.

Many have la­belled this “un­tot­ing” as a mere ac­com­mo­da­tion of po­lit­i­cal con­ve­nience and a des­per­ate last-ditch ef­fort for na­tion­al elec­tion re­demp­tion. It was in­struc­tive that, at the grand cam­paign launch at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, many MPs were no­tably ab­sent and NTA leader Gary Grif­fith, an ac­tu­al LEADER of the part­ner­ship, nev­er mount­ed the plat­form. It would have smart­ed, too, when Mr Warn­er stat­ed that he, him­self, was “the best Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter”. It would be very in­ter­est­ing to ask Mr Grif­fith if he agrees, be­ing a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, him­self. Mr Warn­er, in yel­low, in­di­cat­ed that he was dis­solv­ing the ILP to rein­te­grate its mem­ber­ship back in­to the UNC. This would have reper­cus­sions for next year’s UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions. Mr Warn­er and even Mr Grif­fith could very well end up as can­di­dates in those elec­tions on Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s star slate. There is a ten­den­cy of the par­ty’s lead­er­ship to pri­ori­tise par­ty elec­tions ahead of na­tion­al ones. As such, the post-LGE arrange­ments will be very in­ter­est­ing. With on­ly two more weeks to go be­fore the LGE, we will see if this union is suc­cess­ful if not durable.

PM Row­ley, who pre­vi­ous­ly re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that the PNM would still be the Gov­ern­ment no mat­ter the re­sults of LGE 2023, re­spond­ed to the re­cent UNC machi­na­tions as the “li­on­i­sa­tion of crim­i­nals” per­haps re­fer­ring to Mr Warn­er’s charges for fraud, mon­ey laun­der­ing and rack­e­teer­ing as FI­FA VP and his fight against ex­tra­di­tion to the US. PEP leader, Phillip Alexan­der, re­ferred ex­ten­sive­ly to the Net­flix doc­u­men­tary “FI­FA Un­cov­ered” which did not present Mr Warn­er in the best light.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar seemed pre­pared for pre­dictable re­proach, cov­er­ing her re­newed part­ners with her “vic­tim leader” play­book say­ing they will: “Blame Kam­la/Jack/Gary”.

The OW­TU in­di­cat­ed that it would con­sid­er sup­port­ing the UNC for LGE 2023. How­ev­er, it is un­clear as to whether or not the MSJ has joined the al­liance, as the of­fi­cial po­lit­i­cal par­ty of the labour union. The MSJ leader David Ab­dul­lah is al­so con­test­ing LGE 2023 in Point Fortin but OW­TU mem­bers were seen walk­ing with the UNC’s San Fer­nan­do can­di­dates. Why isn’t the OW­TU sup­port­ing their MSJ com­rades? Is there a split? Has the UNC lead­er­ship in­di­cat­ed that they will per­haps sell the moth­balled re­fin­ery to the OW­TU if they re­turn to gov­ern­ment?

As the po­lit­i­cal par­ties en­thral the elec­torate with their sleight of hand, in­mates at the “max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty prison” in Gold­en Grove have been us­ing their smart­phones to record the shock­ing dai­ly de­liv­ery of con­tra­band via drones to oth­er in­mates. It’s just a re­minder of how far ahead the crim­i­nals are with their high-pow­ered weapon­ry, call­ing shots from be­hind bars and now “drone drops”. It was re­port­ed that at least sev­en drones fly in­to the MSP day and night, trans­port­ing car­tons of cig­a­rettes, wrap­ping pa­per, mar­i­jua­na, cell­phones, Wi-Fi box­es and oth­er items in­to the “max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty prison”. Knives, guns and oth­er weapons can al­so be smug­gled in this way. In re­sponse, the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons said the so­lu­tion is a “tech­no­log­i­cal one” and in some in­stances, they were able to shoot down some of the drones. Don’t they have cam­era sur­veil­lance at least to de­ter­mine who the in­mate re­cip­i­ents are? What about the cell phone “jam­mers and grab­bers”? Such com­mu­ni­ca­tion dead zones should have sure­ly solved these prob­lems a long time ago. Per­haps the “best Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter” (Whether Jack or Gary) could pose this ques­tion to the cur­rent one, while on the hus­tings.

As we draw clos­er to the de­ter­mi­na­tion of LGE 2023 with the cur­rent head­lines on the UNC/NTA/ILP (?), we re­call that Jack Warn­er was the ar­chi­tect be­hind Kam­la­ma­nia that re­placed Bas­deo Pan­day with Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He lat­er formed the ILP and joined with the PNM to re­place Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar with reign­ing PM Kei­th Row­ley. Jack is back. Gary Grif­fith II was fired by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar and when he sought ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Row­ley gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed it, unan­i­mous­ly. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­struct­ed her op­po­si­tion MPs to ab­stain. Gary is back. The OW­TU not too long ago dragged out a man­nequin de­pict­ing Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­clar­ing war on her. The OW­TU is back. They are all “vot­ing and not tot­ing” it seems … but for how long?