DR HAMID GHANY

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany says Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's shock res­ig­na­tion from FI­FA leaves a cloud over his head.Ghany said that in an in­ter­view with CNC-3 this week.Warn­er re­signed weeks af­ter he was sus­pend­ed from the world foot­ball gov­ern­ing body pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of bribery.The mat­ter has now been closed and Warn­er's in­no­cence is main­tained, ac­cord­ing to FI­FA.Ghany said be­cause the mat­ter was con­sid­ered closed by FI­FA it was un­like­ly the T&T Po­lice would get any as­sis­tance as was re­quest­ed to de­ter­mine if any laws of the land was bro­ken dur­ing the al­leged in­ci­dent.

The bribery was al­leged to have been made in T&T."Did Mr Warn­er sur­ren­der? That is a ques­tion that peo­ple are go­ing to ask. It is a very awk­ward set of cir­cum­stances and I guess the on­ly thing that is go­ing to help Mr Warn­er is time," Ghany said.He said Warn­er re­mained "a very hard work­er" and his con­stituen­cy would ben­e­fit from his de­ci­sion to re­sign from FI­FA.Ghany said had Warn­er re­mained in FI­FA and the al­le­ga­tions had been proven it would have af­fect­ed his dual role as a FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive and a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter in T&T.

He said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment would have to for­mu­late a strat­e­gy on how it would deal with Warn­er's sit­u­a­tion."But the re­al­i­ty is that there is a ques­tion mark (over Warn­er) be­cause it was an al­le­ga­tion that will nev­er be proven. So we don't know if it was true or if it wasn't true," Ghany added.He said Warn­er would have to han­dle the po­lit­i­cal fall­out from the de­vel­op­ment.He said the Op­po­si­tion, which had called for a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged bribery al­le­ga­tion, could now call for a probe to de­ter­mine if the Cus­toms and Ex­cise laws were breached dur­ing the al­leged in­ci­dent.