Gail Alexan­der

Two bot­tles of wa­ter–rather than the usu­al one–were on the desk of ex-min­is­ter Jack Wa­ter in his new seat in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.Still, it would not have been enough to quell the po­lit­i­cal fires Warn­er has set in–and out–of Gov­ern­ment in the last week and seem set to burn brighter.

Yes­ter­day's cross­roads mo­ment for Warn­er, shift­ed from PP front row to back­bench and re­sign­ing his seat, still al­lowed him to make good on his promise for PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley not to have his day; Warn­er thor­ough­ly up­staged him in as­sum­ing the new seat.Even Row­ley, though speak­ing, peered down at the bank of pho­tog­ra­phers snap­ping away at Warn­er.

One of the ironies of yes­ter­day's de­bate was that some of the things Row­ley said about Warn­er might have met agree­ment from some PP MPs, and al­so from Warn­er where the PP was con­cerned.The sto­ry of his res­ig­na­tions may in­deed be one of "pres­sures" though hard­ly con­fined to the Sim­mons' Con­ca­caf re­port which brought mat­ters to a head.

The cul­ture said to ex­ist in that foot­ball world and in which Warn­er was steeped has in the end worked against him. The tale on that end of how much it was tru­ly prin­ci­pals ver­sus prin­ci­ples–COP's cre­do–is still un­fold­ing.

Gov­ern­ment pres­sure for him to quit would al­so have arisen since the re­port's au­thor, ex-Bar­ba­di­an At­tor­ney gen­er­al and chief jus­tice David Sim­mons, was ap­point­ed by Gov­ern­ment to head the cur­rent 1990 coup en­quiry. Dis­miss­ing his Con­ca­caf find­ings would have im­pact­ed on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of that up­com­ing re­port.

Sim­mons' re­port ar­rived si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the PM's re­cent US trip where talks with State De­part­ment of­fi­cials in­clud­ed tax eva­sion law. A se­nior COP source al­so said COP was pre­pared to ex­it the PP if Warn­er hadn't "gone."

And Gov­ern­ment would have been ham­strung in re­tain­ing Warn­er's Con­ca­caf bag­gage in­to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls, due by Oc­to­ber, since he would have been prime PNM can­non fod­der. Warn­er's coun­ter­move to re­sign his seat and try to re­build cred­i­bil­i­ty via pop­u­lar­i­ty poll in his area will now have to com­pete in pub­lic opin­ion with the out­come of two po­lice probes in­to the CFU/Bin Ham­mam is­sue and the Fly­ing Squad, along with what­ev­er FBI probe in­to in­ter­nal soc­cer goes for­ward with his son Daryan's co-op­er­a­tion.

With Warn­er out of Gov­ern­ment and the par­ty, he's now fair game for deep­er scruti­ny by the re­port­ed US probe.Hold­ing the sup­port of sev­er­al PP MPs , Warn­er's "pres­sure" has how­ev­er now been re­turned to PP.Though vow­ing not to be­tray Gov­ern­ment, Warn­er's Thurs­day ad­dress was mixed with a mes­sage of bit­ter­ness to­wards sev­er­al PP col­leagues and in­di­rect crit­i­cism of his leader (com­plete with mock­ing of her page-turn­ing tech­nique.)

PP is now faced with war­fare go­ing pub­lic un­der cov­er of elec­tion "cam­paign­ing" if an­oth­er nom­i­nee is cho­sen to con­test Ch­agua­nas West and Warn­er con­tests in­de­pen­dent­ly–a sit­u­a­tion that could ben­e­fit the PNM in a seat which ex-PNM chair­man Lenny Saith's fa­ther Manideo, once rep­re­sent­ed.Warn­er's oth­er "shot"–launch of his news­pa­per on PP's third an­niver­sary–will ex­pand pub­lic reach and be an ad­e­quate bat­tle tool against PP or PNM op­po­nent.

If Warn­er is gam­bling with po­lit­i­cal life or death, the gam­ble PP is tak­ing in its han­dling of the mat­ter is al­so high risk.The UNC chair­man, over­seer of the PP's birth–know­ing en­gine room machi­na­tions–was a key cab­i­net min­is­ter, state board com­mit­tee mem­ber and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­ber, with full knowl­edge of do­ings there­in.

In the coali­tion's frag­ment­ed state, the chal­lenge dis­counts any sub­scrip­tion to the NAR, UNC or even PNM mod­els of such mat­ters since fa­tal frac­tures oc­curred with Bas­deo Pan­day, Ramesh Ma­haraj and Row­ley in those ad­min­is­tra­tions. Warn­er, whose hand Per­sad-Bisses­sar kissed on the night of PP's May 24, 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry, is one of nine se­nior and ju­nior min­is­ters who have ex­it­ed Gov­ern­ment's front line since.

It re­mains to un­fold what game chang­er the Prime Min­is­ter will em­ploy as the ad­min­is­tra­tion, like Warn­er, stands at cross­roads. And which di­rec­tion each might ul­ti­mate­ly take.