To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

There was con­sid­er­able con­cern when Jack Warn­er, the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, was ap­point­ed to of­fice. How would it be pos­si­ble for this man to hold on to ex­ec­u­tive of­fice in two ma­jor sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and serve the coun­try at Cab­i­net lev­el?

Le­gal ad­vice was sought from sev­er­al high-lev­el sources and in the end, the Prime Min­is­ter ap­point­ed Warn­er to the job, ar­gu­ing that he had to be wooed to ac­cept the po­si­tion.Jack Warn­er, in ad­di­tion to be­ing a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment, is the Pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf, the re­gion­al body gov­ern­ing foot­ball and Vice Pres­i­dent of Fi­fa, foot­ball's par­ent body, which has spe­cif­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the World Cup com­pe­ti­tion.

It is al­so wide­ly al­leged that his deep pock­ets played a de­ci­sive role in fund­ing the suc­cess­ful elec­tion of the new coali­tion gov­ern­ment. At the time of his ap­point­ment, the con­cern was about po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est and di­vi­sions of time. To­day, in the wake of Warn­er's key role in the vot­ing that de­cid­ed Rus­sia's host­ing of the World Cup in 2018, the ques­tions around Warn­er's role in gov­ern­ment be­came one of in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy.

It would not be a stretch to de­scribe the Fi­fa Vice Pres­i­dent's name as be­ing mud in Eng­land to­day, as the hu­mil­i­at­ed na­tion which gave the world the game seeks to rec­on­cile its failed bid to host the 2018 World Cup with the many ges­tures it made to Warn­er. It is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that na­tions pur­su­ing the role of World Cup host will en­gage in a num­ber of courtship dances with of­fi­cials hold­ing vot­ing pow­er in Fi­fa and that these en­gage­ments have some­times proven to be at best un­savoury and on oc­ca­sion, sim­ply cor­rupt.

The Eng­lish over­tures to Jack Warn­er in­clud­ed a foot­ball clin­ic host­ed by David Beck­ham on lo­cal soil for young foot­ball hope­fuls, an Eng­lish foot­ball team friend­ly match in Trinidad and To­ba­go and as the time grew clos­er for vot­ing, much more in­ti­mate ef­forts at per­sua­sion. British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron him­self flew to Zurich for a one-on-one meet­ing with Jack Warn­er the Tues­day be­fore the FI­FA vot­ing as part of a fi­nal cam­paign of meet­ings with Fi­fa of­fi­cials.

In Zurich, Jack Warn­er was wide­ly re­port­ed in the UK me­dia to have put his arm around Prince William and as­sured him that his vote would be for Eng­land. The fall­out since Eng­land's snub in the vot­ing has been fierce and un­equiv­o­cal. The gen­er­al tone of UK re­port­ing on Jack Warn­er, an elect­ed of­fi­cial of T&T's rul­ing par­ty who has twice act­ed as Prime Min­is­ter, is best summed by Dai­ly Mail colum­nist Mar­tin Samuel who de­scribed him as "the du­plic­i­tous, odi­ous FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent who has been al­lowed to rule the world from Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The im­pact of this sit­u­a­tion is not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, nor is the anger and em­bar­rass­ment of the Eng­lish. While there's noth­ing that Eng­land can do to him in FI­FA be­yond the thou­sands of words writ­ten chron­i­cling his per­ceived be­tray­al, this coun­try re­mains vul­ner­a­ble to po­ten­tial diplo­mat­ic ret­ri­bu­tion from the British, how­ev­er sub­tle.

Specif­i­cal­ly, there is the mat­ter of air pas­sen­ger du­ty be­ing im­posed by the British Gov­ern­ment on trav­ellers to the Caribbean re­gion. Prime Min­is­ter Cameron had called Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from Zurich af­ter his round of meet­ings with Fi­fa of­fi­cials in a sit­u­a­tion which clear­ly mixed both of Warn­er's roles. In the wake of the fall­out since the vote an­nounce­ments, that may turn out to be a crit­i­cal mis­judg­ment in that ne­go­ti­a­tion–and may prove es­pe­cial­ly telling for the parts of the Caribbean heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on tourism from the UK.

In Warn­er's de­fence, there is clear­ly a sus­tain­able point that, de­spite the in­duce­ments lav­ished on him by the British, he vot­ed for the coun­try he be­lieved pro­vid­ed the best pos­si­bil­i­ties for World Cup 2018. He could al­so ar­gue that it was naive for the British to be­lieve that a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al, a vis­it by a fad­ing foot­ball icon and the chance to meet with a ju­nior mem­ber of the Eng­lish Roy­al fam­i­ly would have been enough to per­suade him and the two oth­er Con­ca­caf votes. In fact, some may see it as an eth­i­cal feath­er in Mr Warn­er's cap that he re­sist­ed the Eng­lish blan­d­ish­ments, de­spite the po­ten­tial diplo­mat­ic con­se­quences of his de­ci­sion.