Tony Fras­er

If Fi­fa's Pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter car­ries out his stat­ed in­ten­tion to have the Jack Warn­er mat­ter sent be­fore a com­pelling in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal, the for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent will have his day in court with his "silk" to ar­gue for and demon­strate his in­no­cence.Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not so for­tu­nate; there is no time-lag and long-wind­ed le­gal ar­gu­ments to be made.

She is al­ready in front the bar of pub­lic po­lit­i­cal opin­ion. That her first line of de­fence was to ex­press sur­prise at the al­le­ga­tions/find­ings of the Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee fooled no one.The fact is it took a le­gion of al­le­ga­tions; pub­lic protes­ta­tions from sev­er­al quar­ters, in­clud­ing voic­es from with­in her Cab­i­net; and fi­nal­ly, the find­ings of a tri­bunal which, if ig­nored, could sure­ly have led to the fall of her Gov­ern­ment, all of this be­fore she could act.

Even so, she act­ed on­ly re­luc­tant­ly and timid­ly, leav­ing it to Warn­er to walk. This has been a very dif­fer­ent mode of op­er­a­tion com­pared to her swift and de­ci­sive ac­tion against King, Vol­ney and Par­tap.And this is notwith­stand­ing the fact that the al­le­ga­tions against those min­is­ters were far less se­vere and deep-root­ed than the mat­ters raised about Warn­er.

Af­ter the pe­ri­od when she stripped Warn­er of a ma­jor el­e­ment of his port­fo­lio, ques­tioned the in­tegri­ty of the man­age­ment of the works min­istry by es­tab­lish­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions of one unit and seemed in­ter­est­ed in find­ing a way to get rid of her po­lit­i­cal god­fa­ther, she re­trieved him from the po­lit­i­cal dog­house and pro­mot­ed him to the high­ly re­spon­si­ble port­fo­lio of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

As Prime Min­is­ter mak­ing such an ap­point­ment, she had every re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­clude de­fin­i­tive­ly on his char­ac­ter and work. If the Prime Min­is­ter is now claim­ing sur­prise at the con­clu­sions of Sir David's re­port, then by her own stan­dards of judg­ment she did a very poor as­sess­ment on the man for the job.

One of the Prime Min­is­ter's most sig­nif­i­cant ar­eas of in­ac­tion had to do with Warn­er's re­fusal to go be­fore the Ethics Com­mit­tee of Fi­fa, the in­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) and the Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee to demon­strate his in­no­cence.

In­stead of say­ing to her min­is­ter that he had to clear his name, not on­ly for his sake, but to pro­tect the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of T&T from neg­a­tive in­ter­na­tion­al scruti­ny, the Prime Min­is­ter made some tri­fling re­sponse in favour of Warn­er to the ef­fect that she was not aware of the Fi­fa cul­ture.More­over, she ar­gued then that those mat­ters were from a dif­fer­ent time and place out­side the purview of her Gov­ern­ment.

It was a line of rea­son­ing that was heard even up to last week from those who con­sid­er them­selves the spin­meis­ters of the Cab­i­net.Well, this most re­cent Con­ca­caf in­ves­ti­ga­tion al­so probed the Fi­fa cul­ture and ex­pe­ri­ence. Why is the Prime Min­is­ter now pre­pared to ac­cept the find­ings of a Fi­fa-ap­point­ed agency in­ves­ti­gat­ing what is very much Fi­fa's in­ter­nal work­ings?

All this ap­par­ent in­dif­fer­ence to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty for good gov­er­nance prac­tices has tak­en from Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar any le­git­i­ma­cy to be shocked, stunned and or sur­prised by the find­ings of the In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee of Con­ca­caf.Faced with the chal­lenge of the find­ings of the Con­ca­caf In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee, the Prime Min­is­ter had lit­tle choice but to back Warn­er in­to a cor­ner and of­fer him the on­ly route out–re­sign or suf­fer the in­dig­ni­ty of be­ing fired.

How­ev­er, it was the least she could do for some­one who, more than any oth­er sin­gle in­di­vid­ual, was re­spon­si­ble for her as­cen­sion to pow­er.But it seems quite log­i­cal to sug­gest that Fi­fa as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­clud­ing its Pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter, is far from be­ing free of com­plic­i­ty in the mat­ters that have been re­vealed by Sir David Sim­mons and his com­mit­tee.

It is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble that Warn­er's al­leged wrong-do­ing could have gone on all these decades with­out be­ing un­cov­ered by an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion with the size and ex­per­tise of Fi­fa.Mil­lions of dol­lars were said to have been giv­en by the world foot­ball body with­out ques­tions be­ing asked about the pur­chase, own­er­ship and man­age­ment of the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence.

Ac­cord­ing to the Sim­mons re­port, the mat­ter of the COE was raised on 27 dif­fer­ent oc­ca­sions at Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive meet­ings yet Fi­fa last year be­gan ask­ing ques­tions about the own­er­ship of the Cen­tre.Is there no link­age be­tween a Fi­fa-es­tab­lished body such as Con­ca­caf and the head­quar­ters of foot­ball?Did Pres­i­dent Blat­ter on­ly de­cide to have Con­ca­caf's af­fairs in­ves­ti­gat­ed be­cause of his fall­out with Jack?

It is clear that the po­lit­i­cal dra­ma has mere­ly reached act one of a mul­ti-act play. It will be in­ter­est­ing to see if Warn­er de­cides to launch a counter-at­tack against the Prime Min­is­ter he put in­to pow­er.If he is un­able to or choos­es not to, there are those who will con­clude that he is ei­ther more about bluff and brava­do (no warn­ing signs yet of the tsuna­mi he promised to un­leash on his for­mer Fi­fa col­leagues) or he tru­ly loves his par­ty and will do noth­ing to frac­ture it.