In the end the FI­FA Con­gress in Zurich closed ranks and stuck with its long-time pres­i­dent, Joseph Sepp Blat­ter, giv­ing the 75-year-old Swiss na­tion­al an­oth­er four years atop foot­ball's gov­ern­ing body. In­clu­sive of the re­gions that stuck with Mr Blat­ter must be count­ed the Caribbean Foot­ball Union and the wider Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (Con­ca­caf), the for­mer (if not the lat­ter) un­der the di­rect guid­ance and bless­ings of its sus­pend­ed pres­i­dent, Austin Jack Warn­er.

The di­rec­tion to sup­port Mr Blat­ter came Tues­day from Mr Warn­er, 24 hours af­ter he had said to the world that "Blat­ter must be stopped."

This ex­tra­or­di­nary 360 de­gree turn­around can on­ly be ex­plained in terms of a Warner­ism: "Yes­ter­day was yes­ter­day and to­day is to­day." Be­fore the vote was tak­en, Mr Blat­ter of­fered the con­ces­sion that no longer will de­ter­mi­na­tion of the host of a World Cup be done by the 24-mem­ber FI­FA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil. From hence­forth, he said, the ex­ec­u­tive body will mere­ly put up a short list up­on which the Con­gress will vote. It is a con­ces­sion which takes note of the al­le­ga­tions that coun­tries are able to se­cure the host­ing of the World Cup by brib­ing mem­bers and groups of the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil. It came out in the wash of al­le­ga­tions and coun­ters that the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of FI­FA had said that Qatar had "bought" the 2022 games. His sub­se­quent at­tempt at an ex­pla­na­tion was per­haps not ac­cept­ed by many.

In his ac­cep­tance speech, a buoyed Mr Blat­ter said all the right things, promis­ing to work with the fed­er­a­tion to clean it up af­ter years of al­le­ga­tions of gross cor­rup­tion and self-serv­ing at the high­est lev­el of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. The 208-mem­ber Con­gress ob­vi­ous­ly thought the bet­ter op­tion was to go with Mr Blat­ter, in the ab­sence of a ri­val can­di­date, Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam and his can­di­da­cy be­ing sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed by FI­FA's ethics com­mit­tee, to trans­form the or­gan­i­sa­tion rather than a messy and open crip­pling brawl. How­ev­er, FI­FA, in­clu­sive of its con­fed­er­a­tions, must sure­ly have un­der­stood that the world has placed it on a short leash. Mr Blat­ter and his ex­ec­u­tive must sure­ly be aware of the in­tol­er­ance be­ing demon­strat­ed in coun­tries around the world for dom­i­na­tion and cor­rupt prac­tices.

They must al­so be aware that peo­ple are hold­ing the pow­er for in­stant change with­in their grasp. It can­not there­fore be a case of a re­turn to the sta­tus quo.Per­haps the first test of a new di­rec­tion will be dis­cernible out of what emerges from the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions made against Mr Warn­er and Mr bin Ham­mam, the pres­i­dents of Con­ca­caf and the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion. Eyes will cer­tain­ly be trained first on the de­ci­sion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors and the ra­tio­nale for the con­clu­sion. It is al­ready be­ing said that Mr Warn­er's about-face is the re­sult of a "kiss and make up" be­tween him­self and the FI­FA boss. In the present, the fo­cus will be on the de­ci­sion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to "stand by" her min­is­ter and await the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

What­ev­er else may be ar­gued, it is the Prime Min­is­ter who de­ter­mines who re­mains in Cab­i­net and there can be no shirk­ing of that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: she stands by her word and reaps the con­se­quences, good or bad. And while await­ing the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion seems a log­i­cal and sen­si­ble thing to do, the Prime Min­is­ter must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the views of the lead­er­ship of the UNC's coali­tion part­ner that Mr Warn­er should be made to wait out­side of the Cab­i­net to be cleared of al­leged wrong­do­ing. This news­pa­per thinks the ex­pres­sion of dif­fer­ent views in­side the Cab­i­net and par­ties is healthy. This news­pa­per how­ev­er firm­ly be­lieves a fi­nal de­ci­sion on Mr Warn­er should await the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.