Last week, the Dai­ly Tele­graph pub­lished an in­crim­i­nat­ing video of Caribbean Foot­ball Union del­e­gates, some of who ap­peared to nod and laugh­ing ami­ably as the voice of the for­mer vice-pres­i­dent of FI­FA, Jack Warn­er, seemed to be urg­ing them to con­sid­er a fi­nan­cial gift "for the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball" as an in­ter­nal mat­ter for dis­cus­sion and agree­ment while urg­ing the group to think of this as "our busi­ness" at FI­FA. In re­sponse to the pub­li­ca­tion, the Min­is­ter of Works ac­knowl­edged that it was his voice-an un­mis­tak­able con­clu­sion giv­en his idio­syn­crat­ic man­ner of speak­ing-but coy­ly sug­gest­ed that all was not as it seemed.

With all due re­spect to Min­is­ter Warn­er, that re­sponse is sim­ply not good enough giv­en the his­to­ry of this se­ries of ac­cu­sa­tions and the min­is­ter's po­si­tion with­in not just the gov­ern­ment but in the hi­er­ar­chy of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, where he serves as chair­man of the UNC. The video seems to sug­gest that Jack Warn­er was not on­ly aware that large sums of cash were brought in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out be­ing de­clared but that the mon­ey was be­ing shared among mem­bers of the CFU as an in­cen­tive to con­sid­er the can­di­da­cy of Mo­hammed Bin Ham­mam as a con­tender for the post of FI­FA's pres­i­den­cy. Warn­er is fur­ther on record on this tape as sug­gest­ing to Bin Ham­mam that the usu­al to­ken gifts of­fered to this tier of FI­FA's lead­er­ship might be bet­ter re­placed with a cash equiv­a­lent to be used for the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball in the re­gion.

Since Jack Warn­er has al­ready ac­knowl­edged that his voice is the one on the tape, it is clear by his own words, that he was aware that the gift­ing process was al­ready skat­ing on the edge of le­git­i­ma­cy as he urged the can­di­dates present to "don't go and talk of it out­side and be­lieve that you are pi­ous and you are holy." The Prime Min­is­ter has re­ferred the mat­ter to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for his ad­vice and for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether there is any is­sue of con­cern raised by the air­ing of this par­tic­u­lar set of state­ments. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready ac­knowl­edged Jack Warn­er as her "right hand," in po­lit­i­cal mat­ters and her pres­ence at the Femmes du Chalet with the Min­is­ter of Works and oth­er min­is­ters for a very pub­lic lunch en­gage­ment on Fri­day spoke vol­umes about the sit­u­a­tion as the Prime Min­is­ter sees it cur­rent­ly.

Such pub­lic po­lit­i­cal shows of con­fi­dence must not lim­it in any way the in­ves­ti­ga­tion-al­so ac­knowl­edged to be on­go­ing dur­ing the reg­u­lar brief­in­gs on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fered to the me­dia by the Po­lice Ser­vice-in­to the ap­par­ent­ly un­de­clared im­por­ta­tion of thou­sands of US dol­lars in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go for re­gion­al "foot­ball de­vel­op­ment." At is­sue in this mat­ter are not just slip­pery mat­ters of in­tegri­ty in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of foot­ball in the re­gion but what ap­pears to be a clear breach of na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­port­ing re­quire­ments as de­mand­ed by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

Be­yond that, and reach­ing in­to the very heart of the po­lit­i­cal mat­ter is the pub­lic rep­u­ta­tion of Min­is­ter Warn­er, who is the chair­man of the par­ty with the most seats in the rul­ing po­lit­i­cal part­ner­ship, a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment who has been called on to act as Prime Min­is­ter on oc­ca­sion and a per­son of high pro­file in­ter­est in the glob­al foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty, whose every move cur­rent­ly re­flects on the in­tegri­ty and ca­pac­i­ty for good gov­er­nance of Trinidad and To­ba­go. While a witch hunt of a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment would be an em­i­nent­ly un­fair out­come of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, this coun­try must be seen to take mat­ters of in­tegri­ty and pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly and be will­ing to hold all its pub­lic of­fi­cials re­spon­si­ble for wil­ful breach­es of the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

To that end, we urge the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to back the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter with re­sources ap­pro­pri­ate to un­tan­gling this con­vo­lut­ed mat­ter and for the po­lice to do their work quick­ly, ef­fi­cient­ly and fear­less­ly. Un­til the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­clud­ed, Mr Warn­er is en­ti­tled to the le­gal pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence to which every cit­i­zen of this de­mo­c­ra­t­ic na­tion is en­ti­tled.