CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Foot­ball is known as the beau­ti­ful game. But for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er may be in the game of his life, fight­ing ex­tra­di­tion to the Unit­ed States, where he faces cor­rup­tion charges in his as­so­ci­a­tion with this game.

Al­though he faces heavy crit­i­cisms from some quar­ters of the pop­u­la­tion for his FI­FA ex­ploits, Warn­er, a for­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter as well as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, was con­fi­dent he would con­tin­ue to get the love, af­fec­tion and re­spect from peo­ple from all walks of life.

He re­mains a charis­mat­ic fig­ure and is still pop­u­lar with the grass­roots peo­ple and the com­mon man through­out the coun­try and in his for­mer Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy where he was MP.

Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the area on Fri­day and the gen­er­al opin­ion was that “Un­cle Jack”, as con­stituents called him, was a bene­fac­tor of Ch­agua­nas West.

While most of Warn­er’s sup­port­ers said that he should be “giv­en a chance” re­gard­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s le­gal rul­ing against him, one res­i­dent said to let the law take its course.

He can re­late to the “small man” and those who had no voice be­cause he al­so came from a hum­ble be­gin­ning bring­ing the peo­ple’s con­cerns in­to the spot­light, peo­ple who know him said.

Those clos­est to him said Warn­er be­gan his work day some­times at 2 am as FI­FA-re­lat­ed com­mit­ments re­quired him to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple in dif­fer­ent time zones around the world. From then on­wards, his time would be ded­i­cat­ed to his min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties, at­tend­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic at his min­istry, con­stituen­cy of­fice and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) strat­e­gy meet­ings.

Sun­day Guardian spoke with for­mer min­is­ter of the peo­ple and so­cial de­vel­op­ment Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein who was al­so em­ployed at Warn­er’s Ch­agua­nas West of­fice from 2007 to 2010.

She de­scribed Warn­er as “a worka­holic al­ways look­ing to im­prove the lives of those that are around him.” He would get to his CON­CA­CAF of­fice at 2 am and would fin­ish at what­ev­er time. At his Cou­va North con­stituen­cy of­fice he met peo­ple from 10 pm un­til the wee hours of the morn­ing af­ter see­ing the last per­son, as peo­ple came from far-flung com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad as well as To­ba­go for help to solve their plights. His days were ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly long and his times of rest would be cat­naps in the ve­hi­cle as he was dri­ven from one des­ti­na­tion to the next.

A reg­u­lar in­tru­sion in his rou­tine oc­curred when a small ded­i­cat­ed team worked from 10 pm up un­til 2 am the next morn­ing, every time he had to trav­el. He of­ten left the of­fice di­rect­ly for the air­port which would be at 6 am the fol­low­ing day.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein ex­plained the rea­son why they worked those late hours was be­fore Warn­er trav­elled he re­spond­ed to every sin­gle cor­re­spon­dence he re­ceived. Newal­lo-Ho­sein said the on­ly ones he did not ac­knowl­edge were those with a gener­ic ad­dress which he thought to be to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ful.

Many of the prob­lems they heard from peo­ple were about in­fra­struc­ture, flood­ing, and the con­di­tion of the roads.

Warn­er, she said, wrote ex­ten­sive let­ters on be­half of his con­stituents for gov­ern­ment ser­vices and of­ten times he re­ceived favourable re­spons­es.

He al­so helped many peo­ple with schol­ar­ships and es­tab­lished a schol­ar­ship foun­da­tion with­in the con­stituen­cy for young men and women to at­tend uni­ver­si­ty. Con­stituents were as­sist­ed with their med­ical op­er­a­tions and he helped sev­er­al peo­ple to get back on their feet.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein dis­closed that when he was the MP for Ch­agua­nas West, Warn­er put on one of the biggest Car­ni­val shows for the area, putting his mon­ey where his mouth was.

When he at­tend­ed Ram­leela and Di­vali or was walk­ing down the streets any­one could ap­proach him and get a hear­ing, and any­one could drop in and talk to him in his of­fice.

In the field of foot­ball, she said, “He trans­formed foot­ball in T&T, and it is re­gret­table his mov­ing out of that area. Foot­ball re­al­ly nev­er has been the same as many peo­ple could at­test.”

Newal­lo-Ho­sein said the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas West were very ap­pre­cia­tive of Warn­er, no mat­ter what hap­pened. She did not think any­body in Ch­agua­nas West would have any­thing neg­a­tive to say about him as peo­ple still re­mem­ber him for what he did for his con­stituents and wher­ev­er he went.

In 2013 Warn­er re­signed as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mere days af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion ac­cused him of “fraud­u­lent” man­age­ment of CON­CA­CAF, the re­gion­al foot­ball con­fed­er­a­tion, where he was a for­mer pres­i­dent. (Warn­er sub­se­quent­ly sued CON­CA­CAF in 2017 for US $40 mil­lion for defama­tion of his char­ac­ter)

He al­so stepped down as MP for Ch­agua­nas West, but seek­ing vin­di­ca­tion from the elec­torate he an­nounced that he would fight the re­sult­ing by-elec­tion to re­gain his seat.

When the by-elec­tion for Ch­agua­nas West was held on Ju­ly 29, 2013, Warn­er trounced the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship in a by-elec­tion for the Ch­agua­nas West seat, tak­ing 69 per cent of the vote with his then new­ly formed In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP). His near­est ri­val, Khadi­jah Ameen, on­ly se­cured 28 per cent of the votes while the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Avinash Singh got just one per cent.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein said in the 2013 by-elec­tion the peo­ple felt that they need­ed to send a mes­sage to the Gov­ern­ment at the time, some things were wrong, and they want­ed them to be ad­dressed and felt that this was the way.

How­ev­er, when he went up again in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015, the peo­ple vot­ed against him.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein felt that it was not an in­di­ca­tion that they did not love him or did not ap­pre­ci­ate him, but she be­lieved they were very well aware that in pol­i­tics they need­ed to be unit­ed to be in gov­ern­ment, rather than frag­ment­ed.

 In the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, at the height of his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, Warn­er got 93 per cent of the votes while the PNM got just sev­en per cent

She said Warn­er was very in­stru­men­tal in the UNC, he was an as­tute busi­ness­man and an acute ne­go­tia­tor as well.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein said while she was re­lat­ing all his good qual­i­ties, it was not to say there were not any un­favourable qual­i­ties about him.

On the streets in Ch­agua­nas West, this was what some of the peo­ple had to say:

Nicholas Roop­nar­ine, Char­lieville:

Jack Warn­er was a good man to the peo­ple of Pierre Road, Char­lieville. He helped with any­thing and every­thing. He helped build the parks around here for the res­i­dents and put a chil­dren’s play­ground in the sa­van­nah. Now, the new Gov­ern­ment is ne­glect­ing the up­keep of these struc­tures, don’t talk about the roads. If it was up to me, I would give him a chance be­cause he’s the man help­ing poor peo­ple.

Reena Ra­mad­har, Warn­er Vil­lage, Char­lieville:

I don’t re­al­ly know the pol­i­tics of the FI­FA world or what’s been done, but I could vouch for his good deeds in the com­mu­ni­ty and the vil­lage with his name; Warn­er Vil­lage. Since he put box drains in Warn­er Vil­lage, there is no flood­ing in the area and we the res­i­dents are grate­ful to him and al­so for help­ing the youths in the area with work.

Tar­ran Per­sad, Char­lieville:

We had a prob­lem with night rob­beries, Jack hired pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty to pa­trol the area out of his own pock­et. He put the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in Ju­bilee Recre­ation Grounds, and when they were around, rob­beries cool down, now they’re no longer there, and the rob­beries start back.

Rishi Ra­moutar, Char­lieville:

He helped plen­ty of peo­ple here. He’s the man. We call him ‘Un­cle Jack.’

For Di­vali, they put plen­ty of mala around his neck, he is walk­ing the streets nor­mal, nor­mal.

One time at the Green Park Recre­ation Ground in Fe­lic­i­ty, some peo­ple tried to stop him from hav­ing a meet­ing with res­i­dents, but they couldn’t stop him from get­ting the roads fixed when he brought in road paving equip­ment and peo­ple.

Ryen Yee, Char­lieville:

He helped a lot of the peo­ple in this com­mu­ni­ty for the lit­tle time he served here. What­ev­er hap­pened to him now, I can’t say what’s go­ing on

Vishal Ra­goo­bar, Kel­ly Vil­lage:

I see him walk­ing in the area and meet­ing peo­ple, and it was not a one-off thing. He lis­tened to the peo­ple’s prob­lems on the ground and helped the youths with mon­ey for their ed­u­ca­tion or if they were go­ing through gua­va sea­son.

Taro So­han, re­tiree, Char­lieville:

This was his con­stituen­cy, he was do­ing a lot of good things for the com­mu­ni­ty when he was MP, but the oth­er side of his life I don’t know about. If the Privy Coun­cil made their rul­ing, and it’s the high­est court in the Caribbean, if he lost the case, and they had to car­ry him back for tri­al, well so be it. The AG is do­ing the cor­rect thing.

Mi­tra Soogrim, Char­lieville: (no pic)

Peo­ple used to go to him, he used to set them up with work no mat­ter who you are, whether you choose to take the job or not was up to you. Jack Warn­er did more for the coun­try than some peo­ple in the ca­bal in some gov­ern­ments. I went to his ral­ly which was the biggest in Trinidad which he fi­nanced.

Cin­tra Chat­ter­goon, Char­lieville: (no pic)

He was a good MP for the vil­lage, the mis­take they made was to let him go. If they didn’t let him go, the peo­ple would have ben­e­fit­ed from his gen­eros­i­ty.

Bo­by Siew, Char­lieville: (no pic)

Jack was the best for the area, he did re­al things for peo­ple, now noth­ing go­ing on now, look at the con­di­tion of the road. From small, I look­ing at him do things for the res­i­dents, every­body used to go for help by him, even a lit­tle work. He did good for the peo­ple, and they recog­nise him, and he nev­er turned down any­body talk­ing to him.