The al­le­ga­tion against Jack Warn­er of at­tempt­ing to il­le­gal­ly per­suade an un­stat­ed num­ber of his col­leagues in Con­ca­caf to vote for the can­di­da­cy of Mo­hammed bin Ham­mam in next week's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of FI­FA could be the great­est chal­lenge yet for the FI­FA vice pres­i­dent. This is so be­cause of a num­ber of fac­tors. First, it comes from in­side the FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive and, even more to the point, from a close al­ly and friend of Mr Warn­er's in Con­ca­caf, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of that body, the big bruis­ing Amer­i­can Chuck Blaz­er, who as­sumed that po­si­tion the same time that Mr Warn­er made it to the pres­i­den­cy of the hemi­spher­ic foot­ball body.

It could al­so be very chal­leng­ing to Mr Warn­er be­cause, un­like in the past, there is no sen­si­ble rea­son for him to get the sup­port of FI­FA's in­cum­bent pres­i­dent, the ven­er­a­ble Sepp Blat­ter. And why that is so is ob­vi­ous: His chal­lenger just hap­pens to be the al­leged ac­com­plice of Mr Warn­er in this mat­ter. At this point Mr Warn­er has said he is un­aware of the specifics of the al­le­ga­tions but he nev­er­the­less says he is "not aware of any wrong­do­ing on my part." Nev­er­the­less, Mr Warn­er has ac­knowl­edged the al­le­ga­tions and in­di­cat­ed that he would be on his way to face the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee. How­ev­er the al­le­ga­tions are played out, at the core of it is the claim that Mr Warn­er-with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mand­ing 35 of the 208 votes which will de­ter­mine whether Mr Blat­ter con­tin­ues to hold this most pow­er­ful post in world foot­ball or whether the man from Qatar will take over the job-was seek­ing to bro­ker a deal.

But that is not the on­ly al­le­ga­tion that is be­ing made. There is the one that Mr Blat­ter's han­dlers may be get­ting a bit wor­ried that Mr bin Ham­mam may have be­gun to at­tract at­ten­tion and so a way had to be found to stop his for­ward march. Mr Warn­er him­self made the ob­ser­va­tion in his state­ment on Wednes­day that the al­le­ga­tions against the pres­i­dent of the Asian con­fed­er­a­tion and him­self have come cu­ri­ous­ly a week be­fore the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Over the decades, there have been sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions against the FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive about cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Mr Blat­ter has al­ways de­nied such al­le­ga­tions. When Mr bin Ham­mam was here two weeks ago, he and Mr Warn­er made their own de­nials of FI­FA be­ing a cor­rupt body and called for ev­i­dence to be pro­vid­ed to sup­port the al­le­ga­tions.

Mr Warn­er and Mr bin Ham­mam, like every­one else liv­ing in a mod­ern democ­ra­cy, must be pre­sumed in­no­cent un­less/un­til proven oth­er­wise. So too must there be a pre­sump­tion at this stage that those mak­ing the al­le­ga­tions against two se­nior and long-serv­ing FI­FA ex­ec­u­tives must have sub­stan­ti­at­ing ev­i­dence to back their claims. Sure­ly no one should ex­pect that two re­source­ful, ex­pe­ri­enced and po­lit­i­cal­ly savvy in­di­vid­u­als such as Mr Warn­er and Mr bin Ham­mam are like­ly to eas­i­ly suc­cumb to al­le­ga­tions, once, as Mr Warn­er has al­ready said, they have noth­ing to be wor­ried about. When Mr Warn­er ac­cept­ed the po­si­tion as min­is­ter in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, there were con­cerns raised then that his po­si­tion in the world foot­ball body could lead to neg­a­tive fall­out for the Gov­ern­ment, if any­thing were to go wrong.

As we have said, noth­ing has so far hap­pened to in any way jeop­ar­dise the in­ter­est of T&T. Nev­er­the­less, and even if mat­ters go in favour of Mr Warn­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be con­cerned that her Gov­ern­ment, through Mr Warn­er, could al­ready be re­ceiv­ing un­want­ed neg­a­tive in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic­i­ty, and this mere­ly by the al­le­ga­tions now be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed world­wide. For the mo­ment, though, the Prime Min­is­ter and the coun­try need to sit tight and wait for the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee.