I don’t know, but people are saying that after his unjustified attack on Express reporter Lasana Liburd, Jack Warner’s remaining credibility is now in serious jeopardy.
Some people have also been talking about an incident in the run-up to a recent general election, when a fairly well-known journalist reportedly travelled to Salybia and returned with a story generally favourable to Jack Warner and the United National Congress (UNC).
They recalled that tales were told of how certain obstacles were placed in the way to get the story etc., etc.
But another journalist who was on the scene gave an entirely different story.
In a most telling revelation, it was recalled, that when they arrived at Warner’s palatial beach house, a UNC politician greeted them by squeezing a handful of $100 bills into their hands and telling them: “Pay your passage with that.”
The money quickly disappeared, it was revealed, I not being told if the politician was told where to shove it or if it was taken, but that they went on to lime, drink and otherwise have a good time.
Was anyone of those journalists ever termed a PNM stooge?
The story is also told of how former TnT Mirror Editor Ramjohn Ali once happily received a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue from Jack Warner one weekday, around a Christmas time, I think, probably for all the stories he wrote about Warner.
Ramjohn is said to have showed the expensive whiskey around the office because he had nothing to hide since, after all, journalists receive gifts everyday from whoever, and it doesn’t mean that they will sell their soul for a drink.
Ramjohn, after all, while he was at the Mirror, being famous for his Against All Flags column, in which he dished out loud blows to all and sundry.
I don’t know Lasana Liburd personally; I have never met the guy.
And the only discussion I ever had about him was some years ago, when a football coach close to Jack Warner (hopefully, he is not yet one of Jack’s stooges) told me that we should approach Liburd to work with us, since he has a natural Mirror style.
However, I am sure, based on what I have seen, so far, that Liburd can take good care of himself and he doesn’t need the Mirror or I to defend him against the scathing attack which football jefe Jack Warner let lose on him this week, terming him a PNMite and all that because he dared to expose some of Jack’s doings.
So this is not really in defence of Liburd as it is an article just talking about things people say.
People around me have also been talking about the female reporter who once sat down at a table with a top UNC politician at a place called the Ranch, and they were literally eating from the same plate.
In fact, if I may sell it how I bought it from other colleagues who were present, at times the reporter was actually feeding the UNC politician by putting food into his mouth and watching him in his eyes and giggling.
Yet, no one called her a PNM journalist!
There was once a journalist who was being paid by a State-owned company, on orders from the UNC government, I am told, to write counter-stories in the same newspaper where he worked.
In other words, everytime a negative story appeared in his paper, his task was to write a story countering it.
For that he received a cheque each month.
A few years later, the journalist, besides admitting that that was the arrangement, also revealed that an editor used to get a bigger monthly pay cheque than him, as part of the same arrangement.
Did that make them PNMites?
Well, we might never know.
Or what about the editor who once had an open cheque at a south restaurant, courtesy the UNC?
People have also been telling me about another editor who reportedly instructed one of his reporters that nothing negative must be written against Warner, moreso in the lead-up to the World Cup in June.
I don’t know, but people are also saying that the editor is either eying a free package to Germany or a job with the bossman, or both.
Does that behaviour make that editor a PNMite?
Eh, Jack?
Did Express’ entertainment reporter Terry Joseph’s trip to Germany for the draw for places last month, in whatever capacity, rubbing shoulders alongside UNC Senator Roy Augustus and the big man himself, Warner, make him a PNMite?
The Terry I know is a survivor, but certainly he is nobody’s tool.
Sorry, Warner!
A funny lot eh, these politicians.
You do their bidding they call you a nice, decent boy.
Then you write one story about them, even if it is 50/50, and you suddenly become the worse thing since the PNM was born almost 50 years ago.
A few weeks ago, Sunday PuncH Editor Anthony “Lexo” Alexis wrote a story “bigging up” Warner, in the aftermath of our World Cup qualification.
Calling him His Excellency among other adulations, Lexo heaped praise upon praise on Jack’s head.
Alexis, son of former PNM Education Minister A.C.Alexis, gushed: “Oh yes, the Soca Warriors did what politicians failed to do: unite the country, lift our spirits to soaring heights and hell, we all feel mighty proud.
“But again, had it not been for Warner -- a guiding compass to the team, nobody would have been celebrating today …”
Well, who tell Lexo to write that?
It was a very proud Alexis, who held up a “personal” letter written and sent to him by the FIFA vice-president a few days later, praising him for writing the “best and most honest story ever” or words to that effect.
Alexis was on Cloud Nine for days, not heeding warnings that that letter might have come off a mill, many others probably receiving similar praise from Jack, he being a man versed in the wiles of massaging egos to continue to get, well, more nice “big-ups”.
Then a few days later, Alexis quietly pointed out that he had seen a similar letter as his in one of the dailies.
This Jack is real head, you hear.
But did that full page of praise for Jack make Lexo a PNMite?
Let me say that I have no problem whatsoever with Jack passing the baton to any one of his sons in terms of his business investments.
I would have been disappointed if he wasn’t doing it.
And journalists know only too well that there is no free lunch, so whatever they do, once they know where to draw the line, then, it is those who are trying to buy them out to catch.
So why did Liburd’s expose hurt Jack so much?
The calypsonian sang: The truth does offend/Patrick start to cuss …
But I doubt that that falls in Jack’s corner.
Back in the 1976 and 1977 general and “Local Government elections, I voted for a party whose leader wore a red shirt, spoke about “the struggle” and said he was championing the cause of the working class.
I have never voted in an election after that.
Does that also make me a PNM?
Eh, Jack?
But would Jack take heed? ’Nuff said!