Ali­cia Llanos

Jack Warn­er will tri­umph. That was the sen­ti­ment of Warn­er's Cab­i­net col­league, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Roodal Mooni­lal. He was speak­ing yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view con­cern­ing al­le­ga­tions of bribery against Warn­er as vice-pres­i­dent of FI­FA. FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Chuck Blaz­er ac­cused Warn­er and its pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Muham­mad bin Ham­mam of bribery and oth­er vi­o­la­tions of the FI­FA code of ethics weeks be­fore the body's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Warn­er and bin Ham­mam are ex­pect­ed to at­tend a hear­ing on Sun­day at FI­FA's head­quar­ters, Zurich, Switzer­land. Mooni­lal ad­mit­ted he did not know all the de­tails of Blaz­er's al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er but was cer­tain "Warn­er will tri­umph." Pressed as to whether he thought it was time for Warn­er to choose be­tween his po­si­tion as a Cab­i­net mem­ber or a FI­FA mem­ber, Mooni­lal said: "No, not at all."

He said Warn­er's in­volve­ment with FI­FA did not ef­fect his abil­i­ty to serve as chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) nor his abil­i­ty to serve as a min­is­ter. He ad­mit­ted there would be "mat­ters aris­ing" with Warn­er. How­ev­er, he re­mained faith­ful to his Cab­i­net col­league. Mooni­lal not­ed the co­in­ci­dence of the al­le­ga­tions and the hear­ing sched­uled days be­fore FI­FA's pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, de­scrib­ing it as "glar­ing."