Seamstresses call it a basting stitch. It is loose and temporary, a precursor to the more permanent stitching.Now that conclusions against Jack Warner have reached critical mass, it is to the credit of the population that we all discerned he was that basting thread in the political quilt that, when tugged with precise strength, will pull apart all stitching, even those far away.
So in the absence of the Prime Minister, the man has plunged his party and Government, and quite probably Fifa, into a vortex of political intrigue. By the time this is published (a qualifier that I expect writers will be using frequently henceforth, so fast will be the developments) the Prime Minister will have returned to the country she left to roil with uncertainty.
It was a baffling decision; prime ministers have stayed at or returned to base for much less. British PM David Cameron cut short his European trip upon the death of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, an event that was not likely to generate political fallout for him.
The PM's departure a day after the country woke to the news that the untouchable had been slapped–despite protestations that it was a caress–permitted interpretations that she was running away, hiding from the tsunami that the man promised to unleash on Fifa but instead saved up for this tiny speck of dust.
De trouble now start, I thought late last Sunday evening. Thoughts were confirmed by Monday when the man submitted his second resignation; by the time he advertised bombshells and the mother of all political meetings, I could have heard the roar of the big wave.Now, after the man's performance of victimhood at Felicity Thursday night, I rethink, much like the PM did when she telephoned the man at his puja to say is okay, Friday too far; I go take the resignation now.
I still think the man is the creator of tornadoes; I see how clever his political maneuver is–is either me or the cabal, he is telling his political leader; I and only I can deliver Chaguanas West to the UNC, he is also saying, and if you don't let me contest this seat for the UNC, I would do so an independent and the UNC will lose a heartland constituency.
But I also see that the man can't help himself, can't stay on script even when he himself has written it. After lauding the PM and declaring his love for his party that he feels deep in his bones, he couldn't help but throw stones at the woman and her cabal.
He can't help, too, the immorality of his politics he practises. On script this time, he boasts of that oui-moment in the Fifa election as if it is to his credit. Disrespect for process, manipulation of election procedure, engaging in an obviously illegal move mattered not to the man; the end justifies the means. He pays for government staff to travel to Jamaica on government business and boasts about that too because that is to his credit, not a breach of ethics.
He can't help disparaging people who challenge him–he insults the Soca Warriors as irresponsible with money–it will pass through them like salts and their $1 million reward finished in two weeks; Andrew Jennings, at whom he had sprayed his DNA, is a disgraced, corrupt journalist; Camini Marajh, well, he go give she something to investigate.
He accepts a US$6 million gift and feels no obligation to explain why and how a loan was converted into a gift. He glides over what happened to the relief money for Haiti, that poor country of desperate black folk that the charitable Eurocentric white people sent money for, and the World Cup TV rights he obtained for $1.But above all, there's his age, that inevitability that he may curse at and scorn but even he has to bow before it.
I watched him on Thursday night and I think now that the man, stripped of international credentials; defeated and disgraced by the white, Eurocentric nation that is Fifa; ignominiously relieved of ministerial portfolio; his Undeniably Naked Carcass without a chair to sit on; no constituency office to while away insomniac hours; having to publicly acknowledge his wife as memory-keeper; his son somewhere posh but reportedly contained; watching the young, dominant Chris Gayle raise his bat to acclaim the morning after; denied time on CNMG; reportedly trapped in this tiny, cruel, bizarre place; and profiling with 20-year-old documents signed by a quail-up white man from Brazil, I watch these things and I see a broken, old, caged man.
He had the power; he has the money; he has the delusions that are as complete as Patrick Manning's but neither he nor Manning has the biological and political genes of Basdeo Panday who has met his end but you wouldn't know that from looking at him.Metaphors will continue to collide; the Kraken rumbles deep in the ocean; the elephants get ready to fight–we will see whose a-- is grass.