Chester Sam­bra­no

“I will fight be­cause I be­lieve that I live here and I have a right and I owe it to my con­stituen­cy and my­self to have a bet­ter life.”

With those words, Jack Warn­er launched him­self back in­to elec­toral pol­i­tics as the lone ILP (In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty) can­di­date Lopinot/Bon Air West.

At a news con­fer­ence on Nom­i­na­tion Day, Warn­er out­lined that af­ter his falling out with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) he en­tered in­to fre­quent talks with then Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley at a house in West­moor­ings.

“We met up to the last Tues­day be­fore elec­tion, Sep­tem­ber the 1st to be ex­act.”

He said in those al­leged talks he and Dr Row­ley dis­cussed sev­er­al strate­gies which would aid the PNM.

“At those meet­ings, Dr Row­ley al­so made sev­er­al promis­es to me at least”.

He said among the promis­es were to re­move the in­equities in the coun­try, get rid of all forms of cor­rup­tion and re­duce pover­ty.

But, “need­less to say not one of the promis­es he made to me over the last five years he kept.”

Dr Row­ley was con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia for com­ment on Warn­er’s claims. He said “I met him at the home of a mu­tu­al friend once. If he con­sid­ers that strate­giz­ing then no won­der he is where he is to­day.”

Asked whether Warn­er pro­vid­ed any help to the PNM in the lead up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion the PM said no.

“Af­ter the ILP picked up seats in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions the com­bined PNM/ILP seats were more than the UNC. An of­fer was made to the PNM to gov­ern Ch­agua­nas. The PNM de­clined and the rest is his­to­ry,” he said.

Warn­er al­so said that the de­cid­ing fac­tor for him to con­test the polls was the ‘poor’ choice of can­di­dates be­ing put up by the two ma­jor par­ties in an area he has lived for over 50 years.

“I said I must come off the fence Dr Row­ley enough is enough.”

Warn­er who served as chair­man of the UNC and held sev­er­al min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios part­ed ways with the par­ty in 2013 and he said he has not spo­ken to its leader since. But he added that doesn’t mean he’s bit­ter.

“If Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is will­ing to talk, or any­body else I have no prob­lem with that.”

He al­so ad­dressed the cor­rup­tion charges laid against him by the Unit­ed States by la­belling them as sim­ply al­le­ga­tions.

“I am op­ti­mistic that if and when it does come to tri­al, I shall be ful­ly cleared as I was by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion weeks ago and there­fore, I have no cause to wor­ry.”

As it re­lates to his age, Warn­er doesn’t see this as an is­sue ei­ther.

He said should he be vic­to­ri­ous he will have to meet with his ex­ec­u­tive to de­cide where his sup­port would lie in the par­lia­ment.