Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be com­mend­ed for speed of ac­tion and for act­ing in a man­ner to up­hold high moral and eth­i­cal stan­dards in re­la­tion to the ac­tions of Mr Collin Par­tap. How­ev­er, the ob­ser­va­tion must al­so be si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly made that her sense of act­ing with strength and de­ci­sive­ness is at best in­con­sis­tent. She has fired Ms Mary King and Mr Collin Par­tap on the ba­sis of the first flush of ev­i­dence and with­out hav­ing fi­nal re­ports in the mat­ters in hand. As the head of the Cab­i­net, the PM was log­i­cal­ly in­volved in get­ting rid of Am­bas­sador Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis with dis­patch af­ter the lat­ter's com­plete­ly undiplo­mat­ic faux pas. Mr Par­tap sure­ly did not act in a man­ner that would in­di­cate that he was an ex­em­plar and some­one who should be seen to be up­hold­ing the law and good eth­i­cal prac­tice. Ac­cord­ing to Mr Warn­er, his ju­nior min­is­ter al­so wrong­ful­ly mis­led the Ag CoP Stephen Williams about a sup­posed con­fronta­tion be­tween him­self and po­lice of­fi­cers.

But what of a com­par­i­son of Mr Par­tap's be­hav­iour to Mr Warn­er's own con­duct as con­clud­ed up­on by the in­ter­na­tion­al Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport? First, he re­fused to al­low his con­duct to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Fi­fa, an or­gan­i­sa­tion he had been a se­nior mem­ber of for 30 years. Sec­ond, Mr Warn­er sim­i­lar­ly re­fused to tes­ti­fy at the of­fi­cial hear­ing of CAS, a court, he Mr Warn­er, had tout­ed as one which would have giv­en jus­tice to his col­league, Mr Mo­hammed bin Ham­man. In its con­sid­ered judg­ment, CAS states that "Mr Warn­er ap­pears to be prone to an econ­o­my with the truth. He has made nu­mer­ous state­ments as to events that are con­tra­dict­ed by oth­er per­sons, and his own ac­tions are marked by man­i­fest and fre­quent in­con­sis­ten­cy." Those are not the con­clu­sions of Mr Warn­er's "PNM en­e­mies" or those in the me­dia who the Min­is­ter likes to charge for "hav­ing an agen­da"; but rather an in­ter­na­tion­al court with­out links to this coun­try and its pol­i­tics and with a rep­u­ta­tion and track record for dis­pens­ing qual­i­ty judg­ments. The judges of the CAS al­so not­ed that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter used his pro­to­col of­fi­cer to col­lect the ac­cused bin Ham­mam from the air­port with his suit­case of US dol­lar gifts, "that there is am­ple ev­i­dence that Mr Warn­er ran a se­cret USD bank ac­count in which he co-min­gled CFU and per­son­al funds."

And from all that is stat­ed in the CAS judg­ment about Warn­er's re­fusal to tes­ti­fy be­fore it, the CAS was left with­out sub­stan­ti­at­ing ev­i­dence to con­clude on the guilt or oth­er­wise of the al­le­ga­tion that Mr bin Ham­man, per­haps with the as­sis­tance of Mr Warn­er, brought a large sum of for­eign cur­ren­cy in­to this coun­try with­out of­fi­cial per­mis­sion. It must sure­ly be the case then that Mr Warn­er's re­fusal (one re­sem­bling the ini­tial re­fusal of Par­tap to be test­ed for too high lev­els of al­co­hol in his sys­tem while han­dling a ve­hi­cle) to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by Fi­fa and to ap­pear be­fore CAS car­ry with them far greater cause for the dis­missal of Mr Warn­er as a min­is­ter com­pared to the care­less and per­haps stu­pid ac­tions of Min­is­ter Par­tap and the undiplo­mat­ic prat­tling of Am­bas­sador Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis. Notwith­stand­ing those facts, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has done noth­ing about Mr Warn­er in her Cab­i­net; in fact when she was last asked, she said she had not read the judg­ment of the CAS. Has she done so by now and what are her con­clu­sions is a ques­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter has to an­swer if she is to be de­serv­ing of be­ing con­sid­ered a leader of strength and de­ci­sive ac­tion ex­er­cised in an even-hand­ed man­ner.