Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must now en­sure that Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er step down, af­ter the guilty ver­dict against his FI­FA col­league Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam, says Op­po­si­tion PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds.Hinds has al­so called on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to probe the re­cent FI­FA bribery al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er which were re­port­ed to have tak­en place at the Hy­att in Trinidad on May 10-11.Hinds spoke af­ter FI­FA's Ethics Com­mit­tee found bin Ham­mam guilty on Sat­ur­day of the bribery al­le­ga­tions.The Gov­ern­ment had ducked queries on how it would han­dle the is­sue by say­ing it had to await the "of­fi­cial" FI­FA re­port on the is­sue be­fore de­cid­ing what to do with Warn­er.Hinds, how­ev­er, said: "Bin Ham­mam was Warn­er's co-ac­cused on the same al­le­ga­tions un­til Warn­er re­signed from FI­FA ahead of the probe out­come."We made it clear Warn­er should have demit­ted of­fice pend­ing the out­come."But the Prime Min­is­ter in her usu­al vac­il­la­tion and game-play­ing said she wasn't pre­pared to judge him ahead of any out­come.

"Warn­er had every op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear his name and re­fused to do so."He with­drew from FI­FA's ju­di­cial process and avoid­ed the pos­si­ble out­come which we now see."Now that the Prime Min­is­ter has in­for­ma­tion that Warn­er's co-ac­cused is guilty and af­ter Warn­er aban­doned the ju­di­cial process, she must en­sure Warn­er be made to demit of­fice."Hinds said CoP Gibbs had said he was await­ing word from FI­FA."Now that FI­FA's work is com­plete, the com­mis­sion­er must in­ves­ti­gate some of the al­leged in­for­ma­tion that emerged that Warn­er hand­ed cer­tain 'pack­ets' to del­e­gates," he said."There is prob­a­bly video footage."Even if he is not keen to probe an is­sue con­cern­ing a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, he must get on with this."