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Thu, Mar

Typography

While the big men at Concacaf get to it, we in Trinidad and Tobago have the much more daunting task of establishing what role FIFA and FIFA-influenced funds have played in the politics and government of this country.

Cornered by the explosive Concacaf report, on what basis will the United National Congress (UNC), its associates and their Government now separate themselves from Jack Warner given the extent to which they have been compromised by their dependence on him?

The resources that Warner brought to the UNC have everything to do, not only with his own spectacular rise in the UNC, but with the UNC’s fortunes, especially since it lost control of the government in 2001.

That was the year President Arthur NR Robinson bad-mindedly broke the 18-18 electoral tie by awarding the government to the People’s National Movement notwithstanding the larger number of votes won by the incumbent UNC.

History may eventually have another say, but for those of us who have lived through the period since, it remains in question whether the UNC would even exist today without Jack Warner.

Rattled by rift and demoralised by drift after 2001, the party that had won two successive general elections could hardly muster a decent showing in the 2003 local government elections, being driven back to the innermost core of its core constituencies in central and south Trinidad.

By 2006, with general elections one year away, the UNC was in even more trouble. The new start the party hoped for with Winston Dookeran as leader following Basdeo Panday’s Integrity in Public Life troubles, had collapsed. Panday’s re-emergence sparked internal strife, splitting the UNC and prompting Dookeran’s launch of the rival Congress of the People.

When it showed up in Woodford Square in September 2007, the COP seemed the one for the PNM to beat, its energised crowd spilling into the streets and recalling images of the NAR of 1986. But in three weeks, it would be all over for the COP.

In a land where the image is the substance, Jack Warner understood the precise requirement for stopping the COP: numbers. By the time it was over on the night of October 7, 2007, the UNC’s Drums of Unity had silenced the COP. It was magic of breath-taking and lavish proportions that only Jack Warner could deliver. Conjured up virtually out of thin air, the UNC, bedraggled up to a few weeks ago, was a party anew, bought and paid for by Jack Warner and almost completely under his control as official co-leader.

This is the power before which the UNC and its partners, including the very COP, would later come to kneel, dazzled by the possibility of returning to power.

Warner’s management model, applied so effectively and richly to the T&T Football Federation, the Caribbean Football Union and Concacaf, has been equally rewarding for the UNC and its partners.

Without demurring, all have availed themselves of the fruits of Warner’s labour, giving in return the unconditional support and room for manoeuvre needed by the maximum leader.

Today, the party that Panday built has been replaced by the party that Warner has built.

The Panday foundation of a politics with a morality of its own has been re-inforced by Warner’s politics of yesterday was yesterday and today is today.

Warner’s ethos has become the UNC’s ethos which has in turn defined the politics of the People’s Partnership and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.

The ideology of money as the root of all power, is in full bloom.

As the politics plays itself out, it is difficult to see how any of this will change.

Nowhere, either in the UNC, the People’s Partnership or the Government has there emerged anyone courageous enough to swim against Warner’s tide.

The COP’s comment about stepping down pending investigation is so much mealy-mouthed opportunism as long as it continues to sup at the same table.

But currents of change are never to be ruled out.

If the UNC ever had a political purpose for being, this is the time for it to emerge and make its voice heard.

Our football is already paying a very high price for its years of freeloading off Warner in exchange for voluntary servitude.

Unless football finds the leadership to win others to a new course, it could be many years before we find our footing again.

The Concacaf Report offers important football lessons for our politics, especially regarding the pitfalls of power through influence-peddling and unregulated fund-raising.

It warns us equally about the danger of power that is unchecked and unaccountable, and the danger of negligence by those with the responsibility to hold power accountable.

Though important and illuminating, Sir David’s report should give little comfort to those Concacaf members who must face the fact of their own delinquency in managing their representatives over so many years.

And what about those members of the UNC and other political parties? How much do they know about the things done in their names? What level of accountability do they have over their parties’ financial affairs? When political financiers hand over cheques in their party’s name, into which accounts do they go?

How many accounts are on the table, how many under, how many off? How many accounts, local and foreign are declared to the membership in whose name the party acts? How are these transactions influencing government behaviour, shaping public programmes and affecting the public purse? What is the value of the vote when its power can be bought and hijacked by special interest?

This is going to be a tough week for the Government. Already impossible, the Miscellaneous Provisions (Defence and Police Complaints) Bill due to return to the Senate on Tuesday is now surely dead.

Politically, the option of an about-face on Warner will not be credible; doing otherwise will not be tenable.

The entire Government is now backed into a corner of its own making.
It can choose to stay there, embattled and under siege, or it can open an escape door by calling a general election and re-engaging the public on some new terms.

Or it can wait for a miracle.

What it can no longer do is to turn to Jack Warner to save itself.