IN POLITICS, they say, all things are possible.
Perhaps that’s why the irascible Jack Warner, once the lead political troubleshooter for the United National Congress-dominated People’s Partnership (PP) government, is now preoccupied in nailing himself to a political cross ahead of Trinidad and Tobago’s coming September 7 parliamentary elections and awaiting the inevitable clutches of the United States justice system.
For now, the unfolding distressing exposures of the flamboyant politician and former well-esconced money handler within the hierarchy of the international football association, FIFA, Warner is increasingly revealing how much hatred he can summon with expectations of poisoning voters against Trinidad and Tobago’s first female prime minister he was once promoted and defended – Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
It is as if this 70-plus years politician and FIFA’s once influential money handler for income and expenditure, is bent on fanning as much political falsehood and hatred as possible against the first woman to lead a major party, and subsequently head a government with a record majority in Trinidad and Tobago.
Spread hatred
To be guided by the official electoral register for the House of Representatives’ coming elections, it seems that Warner, former UNC chairman, parliamentarian and cabinet minister, would have to spread a whole lot of hatred to convince sufficient of the million-plus registered voters why, on September 7, they should give him and not her the benefit on any prevailing doubts on credibility.
For his latest anti-Kamla politicking, Warner chose to go public last week with the “news” that on June 6, 2015, he had informed a local justice of the peace that on April 12, he was advised by a former deputy police commissioner “of a packet containing four ounces of marijuana being found outside the window of Persad-Bissessar’s private residence . . .”.
What a “place”, what “discovery”!
Seemingly unfazed, the prime minister’s then immediate response to Warner, her former national security minister, was to take what he said was “found” to the local police and to now also make his “information” available to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
While other cabinet ministers were openly scoffing at Warner’s claimed marijuana “find”, it was being recalled in the local media that the prime minister had requested Warner’s resignation on April 20, 2013, following a public release of a commission of inquiry report by Barbados’ retired Chief Justice, Sir David Simmons, that made serious claims of corruption against the said Warner.
Media coverage
Sir David had chaired the inquiry – that attracted national, regional and international media coverage – on behalf of FIFA’s Ethics Committee which identified Warner and others of its hemispheric body, CONCACAF, as having been involved in financial corruption.
Now the prime minister, herself a senior counsel and former attorney general, is facing stiff challenges from the main opposition Peoples National Movement (PNM) under the leadership of Dr Keith Rowley, for state power at the September 7 poll, while having to cope with the so-called ‘bacchanal politics’ of her once close and vociferous party and ministerial colleague, Jack Warner.
At the May 2010 general elections, her UNC, leadership of which Persad-Bissessar had earlier captured from the once reputed ‘silver-haired fox’, the charismatic Basdeo Panday, recorded a landslide victory, winning 26 of the 41 parliamentary seats (including the then six first-time Congress of People’s MPs).
Although she could have comfortably governed alone, against the PNM’s dozen MPs, the prime minister opted to form what eventually matured into a People’s Partnership (PP) coalition government – holding together against the odds – to seek a second five-year term.
The opinion polls keep recycling basically the same messages of fluctuating popularity ratings, mostly in the prime minister’s favour, as well as keeping alive hopes for both the incumbent and challenger with recurring projections of a likely “close outcome”.
Well, we have until the late night of September 7, or early the next day, to figure out the significance of any negative impact from Jack Warner’s propaganda barrage against a second term for Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s leadership.
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.
