Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan does not know how he will respond if Chaguanas West by-election candidate Jack Warner asks him to join his new political party. “Do you think tomorrow will have rain?” Khan replied in response to the question yesterday. Khan said Warner has not asked him as yet to join his party. “He has not done so as yet,” he said. “I am a member of the United National Congress (UNC) as we speak and Mr Warner has not approached me.”
Told there were rumours he is one of three MPs planning to leave the UNC and join Warner’s newly-formed Independent Liberal Party, Khan said: “I am very close to Jack Warner. Mr Warner has always been there for me. We always had dialogue together.” But he added: “The Prime Minister has been close to me since 1995, before Mr Warner, and Mr Panday and myself.
“So closeness in politics is nice to have. And if somebody wants to go on his own to form a new business venture, I don’t think that should cause friends who have been together for a very long time to distance themselves. You can keep the politics separate from friendship.” Sacked justice minister Herbert Volney has already indicated his intention to support Warner. Volney said three other MPs were planning to follow suit.
Responding to questions on this, Khan said: “Mr Volney has indicated that publicly. I haven’t heard anybody else indicate that publicly. Nobody has said anything. So I think right now it’s Mr Volney.” Khan had endorsed Warner on his nomination form for candidacy for the Chaguanas West by-election. Warner was rejected by the party and UNC chairman Khadijah Ameen was chosen instead to contest the seat.
And what are his views on Warner’s political party? “I have no thoughts on it. That’s the honest to goodness truth. Nomination Day is tomorrow at eight o clock. “Until he puts in that nomination paper and is accepted, at this point in time it’s just what the news said, he has formed his political party,” he said. “And I think we are entitled to do that under the Constitution. Everybody is entitled to that. So at the end of the day, I have to wish him well, he’s my friend.”
Khan, however, expressed a desire for Warner to return “home” and urged the use of the mediation process, which he said he studied, to bring this about. “I would like Mr Warner to consider coming back home,” he said. Noting he heard Warner say the same thing, he said: “Maybe that will happen in the future, once he speaks to the Prime Minister.
“All it would take is a phone call and dialogue. In fact, I did the mediation programme. I believe in it. I think mediation will work. Tomorrow is a different day.” Khan said he encouraged the use of mediation when former UNC attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and ex-prime minister Basdeo Panday were at loggerheads. He said he also advocated it when the Congress of the People and UNC were warring in 2007.
“Believe it or not, in politics as time goes on, you see things. And mediation can always assist.” Khan said he thinks mediation could even work in resolving the matter between Volney and the Government. He noted, though, it does not seem like mediation is a favourite solution for T&T politicians. “One thing I would say with politics, especially when party issues are involved, you’ve seen it with Mr Manning and Mr Rowley, mediation like it doesn’t take place,” he said.
“It seems like we have problems with mediation in our own systems but we are very good at mediating in external systems.” Warner launched his new political party Friday night. His battle for his former constituency came after he resigned as MP and as national security minister earlier this year, after a damning report from Concacaf during his tenure there.