To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The is­sue of Jack Warn­er hold­ing the post of Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent while be­ing in the Cab­i­net is not mere­ly about law, but about ethics, about con­ven­tions, about set­ting a trend for hold­ers of se­nior gov­ern­ment po­si­tions. This is not about Jack Warn­er and Kei­th Row­ley. It is not even about the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, but rather about set­ting the ap­pro­pri­ate po­lit­i­cal cul­ture and es­tab­lish­ing the right stan­dards in what is a rel­a­tive­ly new par­lia­men­tary and min­is­te­r­i­al sys­tem. While Crown Colony gov­ern­ment did not leave us ex­act­ly emp­ty-hand­ed, the chal­lenge rests with this poli­ty to de­vel­op and es­tab­lish stan­dards and con­ven­tions in the con­duct of pub­lic of­fice.

It is al­so not a mat­ter of whether pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments and min­is­ters en­gaged in un­eth­i­cal prac­tices and got away with them. This is about, ac­cord­ing to one of the ma­jor themes of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, cul­ti­vat­ing "new pol­i­tics." Mr Warn­er has ar­gued fer­vent­ly that he is not in­ter­est­ed in a salary or any of the perks of of­fice. His sug­ges­tion is that on­ly if he is in re­ceipt of rev­enue from the State can there be a con­flict of in­ter­est be­tween the Fi­fa post and his min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion. Con­flict-of-in­ter­est sit­u­a­tions can arise with re­gard to an in­ter­na­tion­al body such as Fi­fa in­ter­act­ing with a gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the stag­ing of tour­na­ments, qual­i­fi­ca­tion for tour­na­ments, the procur­ing of goods and ser­vices and a range of oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties. All such deal­ings must be be­yond sus­pi­cion of even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of col­lu­sion.

In T&T's favour are Mr Warn­er's many and var­ied in­ter­na­tion­al con­tacts that could le­git­i­mate­ly open a door in fur­ther­ance of coun­try-to-coun­try re­la­tions. At a per­son­al lev­el, Mr Warn­er's work eth­ic and his ob­vi­ous abil­i­ty to get things done are al­most leg­endary. That could be both a boon for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and a shin­ing ex­am­ple to oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers and the coun­try. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly too are the demon­strat­ed peo­ple skills held by Mr Warn­er. He could very well be the link need­ed to bring peo­ple in­to the busi­ness of gov­er­nance. Nev­er­the­less, the tra­di­tion here, as well ex­pressed in the code of ethics of the Par­lia­ment, has been that when peo­ple ac­cept min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions, they have dis­en­gaged them­selves from busi­ness, oth­er in­ter­ests and pro­fes­sion­al life. If Mr Warn­er were al­lowed to start a new trend of min­is­ters and oth­er se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials be­ing in­volved in such a sig­nif­i­cant or­gan­i­sa­tion as Fi­fa, where will this trend take the po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive cul­ture?

How would the Prime Min­is­ter, if she al­lows Mr Warn­er to con­tin­ue to hold the Fi­fa post, be able to say "no" if oth­er min­is­ters de­cide to fol­low suit? And this brings the is­sue to the point that in­evitably, be­yond the strict le­gal­i­ty of the is­sue, it is Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar who will have to make a de­ter­mi­na­tion on whether Mr Warn­er stays in Cab­i­net or not. Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship nev­er failed to point the fin­ger at what were in­stances of the PNM side-step­ping ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour. For in­stance, Mr Man­ning ap­point­ing his wife to the Cab­i­net and giv­ing free reign to con­struc­tion and en­er­gy czars. Not too dif­fer­ent was a UNC gov­ern­ment hand­ing a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions port­fo­lio to a min­is­ter whose fam­i­ly was in­volved in the very busi­ness.

The ba­sis on which Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her team cam­paigned and won of­fice was that they would strive to be dif­fer­ent in re­al­i­ty from the par­ty they re­placed–we would all rise to a high­er lev­el of in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy. In ef­fect, the Prime Min­is­ter has three op­tions: she can keep Mr Warn­er in Cab­i­net, there­by re­ject­ing cen­turies of an es­tab­lished con­ven­tion; she can re­lieve him of his Cab­i­net po­si­tion and ap­point him to an ad­vis­er or plenipo­ten­tiary post, or she can em­bark on a process of con­sul­ta­tion aimed at chang­ing or re­tain­ing the con­ven­tion. What­ev­er the Prime Min­is­ter does, she should know that this is one of the de­ci­sions that will de­fine her ad­min­is­tra­tion. She should, there­fore, weight all the op­tions and their con­se­quences very care­ful­ly be­fore com­ing to her de­ci­sion.