by Errol S. Pilgrim 10/06/15
The late Prime Minister and Father of the Nation, Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, had been at his prophetic best when he warned Trinidad and Tobago that “after the PNM it would be at best bacchanal and at worse massacre”. Our closest brush with massacre, in the wake of the Williams prediction, came in July 1990 in the bloody coup attempt by Jamaat al Muslimeen insurgents who tried to remove the elected NAR government by force. Twenty-four people were killed. The bacchanal we have had in abundance. Under the UNC government of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, this country has been subjected to five years of unmitigated bacchanal, the depth of which not even the mind of an Eric Williams could have anticipated. We have had no ordinary kind of bacchanal; not the superficial kind that each year seeks to focus public attention on the now clichéd calypso creed that “carnival is bacchanal”. The bacchanal we have had to so painfully endure over the entire five years that this government has been in office has been so characterized by scandal that some commentators view the Jack Warner ignominy as a key part of the interminable matrix of UNC transgressions. These are transgressions that started with Jack as the consort and queen-maker of Kamla Persad-Bissessar and have peaked with Jack emerging as the bitter foe of Kamla Persad-Bissessar. The mutual admiration society they formed in 2010 to elevate a political neophyte to Prime Ministerial stature, has become so putrefied and gangrenous that she now finds Jack too offensive to still share the parliamentary space that they once so amicably occupied. So, mindful of course of the phalanx of international news cameras present to record the unfolding Jack Warner show, a Prime Minister who once regarded him as her most devoted benefactor, huffs out of the House of Representatives after calling on him to forego his legal rights and surrender his corpus to the United States authorities. Given the Prime Minister’s disregard for due process and the rule of law, as was demonstrated in her tyrannical and unconstitutional expulsion of Opposition Leader Dr. Keith Rowley from the Parliament, it should not surprise Mr. Warner if she and her sycophantic Legal Affairs Minister should seek to short-circuit the extradition process, which the legal experts say could take years of legal wrangling. Mr. Ramadhar, by now the Prime Minister’s most fawning toady, could not wait to echo her call for Jack Warner to forego his right to due process and to give himself over to the US authorities in order to “save Trinidad and Tobago further international embarrassment”. A curious position indeed for any government to take, especially one that had so stoutly defended and shielded Jack Warner from the international cloud of suspicion that had for so long dogged his fascinating ascendancy to fame and fortune in FIFA. Given the modus operandi of the Kamla Persad-Bissessar government it is not too far-fetched to imagine a deal being struck to get the US authorities to pounce on Jack Warner in the dead of night and spirit him away to the United States to face a quick trial; and it does not really matter whether he gets a fair trial in the light of the unprecedented international publicity and judgment attending the charges against him.
What matters is that Jack Warner, who had once been invited to the White House to wine and dine with President Obama pending the outcome of the US World Cup bid, is now the bête noire of the US Department of Justice and the quicker they get him on American soil the better. After all, the American authorities are not averse to resorting to precipitate action to “get their man” once he earns a “Most Wanted” tag from the US Department of Justice. Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, President of Panama, learnt this the hard way some 26 years ago. Noriega was a corrupt dictator heading an efficient narco-militaristic regime in Panama. In 1989, the United States staged a military invasion of Panama and removed Noreiga from power. He was captured, detained as a prisoner of war and flown to Miami where he was tried and convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992. Noriega's U.S. prison sentence ended in September 2007 and culminated in his being extradited back to Panama where he would serve a further 20 year jail term. It must be noted that prior to being deemed persona non grata by the United States, Noriega was the darling of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), having worked with the CIA on contract from the late 1950s until the 1980s. In the case of Jack Warner and notwithstanding his constitutional right to due process, the United States would not wish to have a repeat of the situation involving Ishwar Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson in which a US request for the extradition of these two major UNC financiers to face a series of serious charges, has so far met with one legal stumbling block after the other. But “Gopaul’s luck is not Cephus Paul’s luck” and whereas Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her cohorts have sought at all costs to shield their untouchable duo from the legal clutches of the Americans, they are only too eager to forever rid themselves of Jack Warner. And that has absolutely nothing to do with any concerns about tarnishing the international image of Trinidad and Tobago. On the contrary, the breadth of the international attention that Jack Warner has attracted to this miniscule country in the Caribbean may well generate an influx of curious travellers wishing to see for themselves this country of 1.3 million that spawned a son of the soil who would become the second most powerful man in the most powerful sporting organization in the world – warts and all. So its Jack Warner now ministering to tourism. What may have really tarnished the image of Trinidad and Tobago is the long, laborious season of unprecedented bacchanal and wrongdoing that this country has had to suffer since the advent of this government in 2010 – from Section 34 to Lifesport, from emailgate to prisongate, from the firing or resignations of almost two dozen misfits in the Cabinet to the forced resignation of an Attorney General, now the subject of a criminal investigation that the police seem hesitant to bring to a close. What does it do to the image of Trinidad and Tobago when the United Nations designates our country as having the tenth highest murder rate in the world?
Or where the tolerance levels of many right-thinking citizens are increasingly reaching their limit as they witness the government’s accelerated and blatant abuse of its power inside and outside of the parliament, a government that has presided over the collapse of every significant state institution in the nation? How does the image of Trinidad and Tobago hold up to the tapestry of corruption, lies and deception that has been intricately woven into government policy? What does the world think about Trinidad and Tobago when the unresolved slaying of a legal luminary like Dana Seetahal invokes fear, confusion or suspicion of exalted, untouchable involvement? So Jack Warner has to be constantly alert to the possibility of the government using its wiles - which he fully knows about - to deprive him of his right to due process and have him summarily flown out to US soil, not because of any concern for this country’s international image. His presence in the present crucial election campaign is a constant reminder of the warped judgment and hypocrisy of Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar who insisted that he be given some of the most significant portfolios in her Cabinet, made him her first acting Prime Minister and has not been able to convince anyone that Jack Warner was not her major benefactor. “I received no money from Jack Warner”, has been her strident protest, sounding as hollow as the Acting Police Commissioner’s repeated promise to “leave no stone unturned” in bringing Dana Seetahal’s killers to justice. This threat by her now allegedly tainted “fairy godfather” to expose well-kept secrets must also be worrying for the Prime Minister. But Jack Warner must be aware that his is not the last bit of bacchanal in respect of which this government must take responsibility. For even as the Warner maelstrom continues with its international convulsions, the attention of Trinidad and Tobago is made to focus on yet another burgeoning scandal involving the beleaguered CLICO, Minister of Finance, Larry Howai; Central Bank Governor, Jwala Rambarran; CLICO Chairman and a former Finance Minister, Gerald Yetming and CLICO Managing Director Carolyn John, said to be a woman of impeccable integrity. It is a scandal in which the upstart Central Bank Governor fires Yetming and John from CLICO, Yetming deems Rambarran’s reason for the dismissals “a blatant lie”, Minister Howai sits twiddling his thumbs and a suit for wrongful dismissal is threatened. And so - with apologies to calypsonian Iwer George - it has not been “fete after fete after fete”, but bacchanal after bacchanal after bacchanal for five very long years. How’s that for our international image?
Replies
Cecil,
I'm thinking this is more an issue of TAX EVASION and you know Uncle Sam don't play when it comes to tax revenue.
Also ODW , possible illegal financial transactions were made using large amounts of US currency. Once big money is involved, it's guaranteed to catch their eye.
Plus , I'm sure US soccer authorities were well aware of the bobol involved in the World Cup bidding process, and may have felt cheated on their bid.
True, also the SNITCH that started it all, Blazer was squeezed into spilling the beans. He has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Blazer was an informant for the US investigation
Blazer, who was a suburban soccer dad when he got involved with FIFA, was a member of the executive committee from 1996 to 2013 and the general secretary of CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer in North American, Central America, and the Caribbean.
He was famously corrupt, including not paying income taxes for a decade. He also had an apartment in Trump Tower just for his cats, according to the New York Daily News. (For more on Blazer, read this BuzzFeed profile from last fall.)
Blazer cooperated with the FBI, secretly recording FIFA officials at the behest of the Department of Justice. He was one of four former FIFA executives to plead guilty and become informants, building up evidence that led to last week's indictments and arrests of FIFA officials and FIFA president Sepp Blatter's resignation on Tuesday.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8725405/chuck-blazer-fifa-bribes
John Oliver Fires Back at Jack Warner...
odw, My question is how come after all these years this FIFA case get so hot? especially in the US.
There is no guarantee that the next Government would not be as corrupted as this one, in T&T class-ism is a demon, only the privilege get to dip in the cookie jar, the sad part is everybody have to "eat ah food"
Cecil,
This is why I go back and listen to our social scientist to understand the dynamics at play. Understand where the real power lies in T&T.
odw, there you go, access to the cookie jar.