Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Jack Warner are hosting a community meeting Thursday night in Macaulay, the same location where the UNC held its inaugural Monday Night Forum this week. Maharaj, who claims he was denied an opportunity to speak at his party's meeting, is the Parliamentary representative for the area.Warner was not invited to speak at Monday's UNC meeting, which featured speeches by political leader Basdeo Panday and several other MPs.
Thursday's meeting is billed as a forum hosted by the Tabaquite MP to report to the people. The agenda includes crime and social ills, the draft constitution for Trinidad and Tobago and what Maharaj calls "dictatorship in Trinidad and Tobago".
But the highlight would be a report by both Maharaj and Warner on developments within the UNC Alliance and and the need for the alliance to win government.
This is likely to deepen the rift between the party and the two MPs. For some time now relations have been strained between Maharaj and Warner and the political leader.
It started shortly after Warner gave an interview suggesting that unless the party embraces changes it risks becoming irrelevant. Warner also called for early internal elections to settle the party's leadership issue.
Read the transcript of the Jack Warner interview
When the Monday Night Forum was announced for this week there was speculation that Panday would seize the opportunity to chastise the two MPs. But he did not.
The political leader told supporters to do so would be a grave act of indiscipline, but he made it clear that he would not let anybody usurp his role or steal the party.
“I only want to say that this party this year will be 20 years old, and it took a lot of blood, a lot of sweat and a lot of tears of you and me and all of us to build this party and to carry it where it is. And nobody will destroy this party whether from the inside or the outside, except over our dead bodies.”
He did say that he would seek his party's approval to meet with the leader of the Congress of the People (COP) to discuss the constitution issue, which is the number two item on Thursday night's community meeting that Maharaj is hosting.
The much-anticipated "report to the people" on the internal developments in the party would most likely be seen by Panday as a disciplinary breach since he made it clear Monday night that he considers internal matters to be kept internal.
It could provide an opportunity for both Maharaj and Warner to be kicked out of the party. But insiders say that's unlikely to happen. One source said Panday wants to focus on attacking the Manning government's failures and won't use the bickering within the party to distract him from the national agenda.
The source said it is Maharaj who is provoking Panday to act, noting that while both Maharaj and Warner have differences with the way the party is operating, Warner has made it clear that he has no personal problem with Panday.
Both Warner and Maharaj have crossed swords with Panday before and both have returned to be embraced by the leader.
Maharaj, who many UNC supporters call "the great betrayer", was responsible for negotiating a parliamentary coup with the PNM following the 2000 election, which led to the collapse of the Panday government. And his political fight with the UNC in the 2001 election led to the 18-18 tie and the subsequent presidential coup that put Patrick Manning and the PNM in office.
Warner was a member of a team that opposed Panday's slate in the party's last internal election and won the post of deputy leader on Winston Dookeran's platform. Dookeran became the unopposed UNC leader in that vote. But he soon became disenchanted with the party and eventually left to form the COP.
Warner rejected Dookeran and went back to Panday. Together, they formed the UNC Alliance, welcomed back Maharaj and jointly ran the 2007 election campaign, winning 15 of the 41 seats in the House of Representatives, with Warner winning Chaguanas West from Manohar Ramsaran who had left the UNC to run as a COP candidate.
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