Brothers and Sisters, I have crossed over 20,000 miles, two time zones and four airports in a journey from Zurich, Switzerland that lasted some 13 hours flying time to ensure that I would be here at Rienzi this afternoon. I will then immediately have to head back tomorrow to be in time for my FIFA commitments. If I had to swim to be here, I would have done so.I might not have made it, but I would have given it my all, simply because that is just the way I am. When I commit to a cause, come hell or high water, Sunday or Panday, nothing will stop me.
It was with the same passion I began my journey into politics behind the UNC.
I saw then as I do now a party that represents the discriminated, the underprivileged and the overlooked. I saw in the UNC then as I do now, a party that embraced everyone, a party that represented everything that we could become. I saw then as I do even more now the only hope for Trinidad and Tobago.
Nothing has changed for me in the way I felt then when I sat with Basdeo Panday and offered my unequivocal support and now….except…except…that the political scene around us has changed.
It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that the UNC will not change the government unless we first change our approach. To move from victimhood to victorious the UNC has to understand that all political groupings must be embraced, genuinely.
The last general election demonstrated this and there is nothing to be gained from ranting and raving about those who voted another way and by telling them they must not complain now just because they didn’t vote for the UNC.
That is the politics of the past.
Today’s expectations and the dire circumstances we currently endure here now dictate that we reach out beyond our past conflicts, beyond our old adversarial positions, beyond our petty political squabbles, beyond our grievances, beyond our fears, real or imagined, beyond blind political ambitions, beyond suspicion and acrimony, to find common ground – to end the killing fields of crime, to halt the squander mania of billions of dollars of our resources while we suffer, to meet the basic needs of a desperate populace, to restore hope, confidence, law and order in Trinidad and Tobago.
That is our mission.
Who cares to listen to an opposition party railing against a government that becomes more entrenched because our own failings have allowed them to be there?
We have got to create the kind of political organisation that reflects what the electorate wants. But how can we hope to understand what voters want when we don’t even know what our membership wants!!
The UNC Executive has refused to hold elections for years, so on whose authority are we making decisions at the so-called leadership level?
If the UNC is just about the dictates of one man then it has by default excluded itself from ever representing the people and by ever again forming the government.
How much longer must the UNC go on like this? How many more elections must we lose before we gain such obvious political insights? How can we shout for democracy in Trinidad and Tobago when it isn’t practised within our own party?
That isn’t just hypocrisy, it is just downright stupidity.
Maybe a PBR Pass and an Opposition Member of Parliament parking sticker might be a glorious achievement for some, but it means nothing to me. I would trade my job, my home, and all of my savings for a change of government today. That is my objective and that my brothers and sisters is where I differ from my political colleagues including Basdeo Panday.
Times change; people change. We will not change the government unless we look within and change ourselves.
Part of that change is an embracing of the COP and others, not by mere words but through genuine discussions on accommodation. That represents one platform. The other is by going to our own membership and asking them who they want as leaders to take the Party forward into government.
Once they have chosen we then have the moral authority and indeed, the mandate of our membership. But to continue year after year deferring this simply because some are afraid that the membership may not re-elect them is absurd and undemocratic.
Who gives anyone in the current leadership of the UNC, including myself, the right to say they make decisions on behalf of the membership of the Party when the membership has been denied their democratic right to choose who they want in their leadership for years?
Am I wrong to say this? I must sit down and speak only when I am spoken to and express my opinion only when one is given to me? While all of this is going on people are dying and suffering? We are beholden to the people not to a politically incestuous group who seem to have lost touch with whom and what really matters.
Each day in every home I visit in Chaguanas West, my constituency, people express their misgivings about what is going on. They say “you all need to change how you going about things, you need to get together with the COP and others; you need to bring in new blood in the Party, you need to talk to Bas and the boys.”
These are the comments across Chaguanas West and indeed everywhere I go. These are the views of the grassroots. How can we be so arrogant to ignore this?
I am called disloyal and undisciplined by the Executive for saying these things? I have tried to represent the views of the constituency within the Party but to no avail. So where should my true loyalty lie?
I say with the people, not the expired Leadership Council.
Trinidad &Tobago is clamouring for change in direction and management. Not even PNM supporters right now like the way the PNM is going. But we in the UNC have become our own worst enemy. The only thing that is stopping us from forming the government is ourselves. Not the PNM.
The electorate has already shown us that they don’t want them. They have also shown us that the opposing parties must unite or perish.
Since I am not ready to be dead or even play dead either politically or otherwise, I will be taking the fight more aggressively than ever before, to ensure the will of the people is carried out.
It is my hope, but not my expectation, that good sense will prevail and the time-expired Executive and the changes so necessary, will be made and internal elections held forthwith.
Be assured, whatever happens, I will not be moved in my position for the people. Change must and will come within the UNC. A change in government will be realized. That we are here talking about this is in itself a good thing. What must be done must be done.
Remember this day, for it signals the start of the end of the current ruling party’s term in office. The sun is rising. Hope is returning. Unity among all those in pursuit of a better Trinidad and Tobago can celebrate the fact that the forces of change have met the feebleness of reactionary thinking.
Yet there is an ironic twist to all of this.
I have stood through thick and thin with Basdeo Panday. I have suffered with him. I have supported him politically, emotionally and financially through his toughest times and greatest challenges.
I have been ridiculed, ostracised and vilified for my political position and today while I stand against his railings, I do it for the very country he so bravely fought for and for his legacy.
It is my belief therefore that there will come a time when the man who today would wish me gone will say “Jack, I am glad you stood strong. We could not have done it if you didn’t.” He would give his politically mischievous grin and say “but ah give you a good fight, eh?”
It isn’t however a fight with Jack Warner. I am almost irrelevant to the process. This is about becoming more relevant to the needs of the people and the politics of the day.
This is about sacrificing personal political glory for the greater good. This is about the very survival of our Republic.
This is about the little child in Chaguanas who hugged me and said “keep us safe Mr. Warner.”
This is about the young footballer from Gordon Street who asked me if he didn’t do well enough in football if he could still get a job.
This is about the businessman I met at the Chamber of Commerce who asked me why we couldn’t put aside our differences with the COP for the sake of Trinidad and Tobago.
This is about the woman who held me and cried at the Anti Crime Commission I had established and said “do it for my son who died. Make it stop. Make it stop.”
This is about my understanding that family isn’t just those to whom you are related but those you feel a connection with…as I do today with so many I have come into contact with in one way or another.
This is about each and every one of you I promised never, never, never to disappoint. I will never let you down.
Jack Warner | Deputy Political Leader, United National Congress
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