Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kei­th Row­ley, said yes­ter­day he feels no sense of vin­di­ca­tion at the al­le­ga­tions that have been made against Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er by an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the world foot­ball body, FI­FA. "I feel em­bar­rassed," said Row­ley in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing the al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er as an "in­ter­na­tion­al scan­dal" in which a se­nior min­is­ter in the T&T Gov­ern­ment "has been made to re­port, like an er­rant school­boy, to Zurich to an­swer charges." The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion point­ed out that the per­son whose con­duct was be­ing called in­to ques­tion was not on­ly a se­nior min­is­ter but had act­ed as Prime Min­is­ter on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions and was the chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, the main par­ty in the five-mem­ber Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion.

In his first of­fi­cial act af­ter be­ing sworn in as the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion al­most one year ago, Row­ley ar­gued Warn­er's ap­point­ment to Cab­i­net while he re­tained the post of FI­FA vice pres­i­dent was a con­flict of in­ter­est and con­trary to Par­lia­ment's Code of Ethics, which was ap­proved in 1988.

Row­ley raised the con­flict of in­ter­est is­sue with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Row­ley said there were peo­ple in T&T "who ought to have known bet­ter" who put up all kinds of "spu­ri­ous ar­gu­ments" in an at­tempt to con­tra­dict his con­tention that Warn­er could not serve in Cab­i­net while re­tain­ing the FI­FA po­si­tion. "I take no plea­sure in this be­cause I do not like to see my coun­try por­trayed in this way," said Row­ley, adding that the neg­a­tive ex­po­sure the coun­try is re­ceiv­ing from the is­sue "has brought shame, dis­grace and in­con­ve­nience to the peo­ple of T&T." SEE PAGE A50