Gail Alexan­der

Now that yes­ter­day's FI­FA elec­tion is over and Sepp Blat­ter has re­turned to the helm of the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball body, "a lot might change" re­gard­ing Jack Warn­er's is­sues, ac­cord­ing to his at­tor­ney Om Lal­la.

Lal­la spoke yes­ter­day as he pre­pared to wel­come Warn­er back to T&T tonight at 10.35 pm from Zurich.

The em­bat­tled Warn­er has been sus­pend­ed by FI­FA for 30 days pend­ing probe of bribery al­le­ga­tions against him and Qatar's Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam. For­mer Con­ca­caf gen­er­al sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er had lev­elled bribery al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er and bin Ham­mam that they arranged for US $1 mil­lion in bribes to be of­fered to 25 Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions at a meet­ing in Trinidad over May 10-11. Both were sus­pend­ed, pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Bin Ham­mam had been set to con­test the FI­FA pres­i­den­cy against Blat­ter.

How­ev­er he dropped out on Sun­day, leav­ing the way clear for Blat­ter to be re-elect­ed boss of FI­FA. Whistle­blow­er Blaz­er, how­ev­er, was fired on Tues­day by Lisle Austin, new CON­CA­CAF head. Yes­ter­day Lal­la said he be­lieved FI­FA's Ethics Com­mit­tee had start­ed work. He added: "Now that the elec­tion is over a lot might have changed. "The pace they moved at with the probe clear­ly demon­strat­ed that the elec­tion was a very im­por­tant part of it, es­pe­cial­ly since Blat­ter was part of the in­quiry. It seemed it had to be sort­ed out be­fore the elec­tion. "Cer­tain­ly the elec­tion seemed to be a mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor. By con­trast the re­cent Treis­man foot­ball in­quiry in the UK where charges were made against Warn­er al­so took a month." Asked if there was any chance for Warn­er of rap­proche­ment as re­sult of Blat­ter's re-elec­tion, Lal­la said: "Any­thing is pos­si­ble." He could not say if Warn­er had spo­ken to Blat­ter.

Lal­la said there was "a lot of anx­i­ety" and the FI­FA pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry was con­duct­ed "in an ex­pe­dit­ed fash­ion." Now that the anx­i­ety had been re­moved, Lal­la said he was op­ti­mistic. He added: "It's too ear­ly to tell. A lot has hap­pened in a short space but the re­cent UK is­sue with Lord Treis­man's charges gives us a win­dow on how this might un­fold since cur­rent al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er are not dis­sim­i­lar to Treis­man's. "We're hop­ing it ought to end in the same way. There was high mo­ti­va­tion in the UK is­sue-they weren't hap­py at los­ing the UK bid-as there has been in this case al­so." Lal­la added, "It's an in­ter­nal is­sue and there's lot more than meets the eye. There's a lot be­hind the scenes re­lat­ed to this mat­ter.

"In tak­ing every­thing in­to ac­count Jack has a very good chance of suc­ceed­ing." Lal­la said there was a lot of per­son­al an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als since coun­tries, like US and the UK. did not win FI­FA bids. He was asked why Warn­er had changed his po­si­tion of Mon­day-of say­ing Blat­ter had to be stopped-to urg­ing re­gion­al mem­bers to sup­port Blat­ter on the eve of the elec­tion. Lal­la said: "Whether it was out of res­ig­na­tion since Blat­ter was the on­ly can­di­date or whether he just want­ed them to move on and en­sure the body re­mained in­tact, I don't know." Lal­la, who has filed an ap­peal on be­half of Warn­er, is await­ing a hear­ing date from the Ethics Com­mit­tee. He said the two-pronged ap­pli­ca­tion sought to ap­peal the sus­pen­sion, as well as ap­peal any fur­ther sus­pen­sion.

He added: "Our case is re­al­ly a de­ter­mi­na­tion of whether to pro­ceed with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. For in­stance, Mr Warn­er was giv­en a mere 24 hours to give a writ­ten re­sponse on is­sues." While Warn­er has had is­sues in pre­vi­ous FI­FA elec­tions, Lal­la said that was the first time the sit­u­a­tion had reached that stage "with such pow­er­ful peo­ple." Lal­la added: "He is the en­vy of a lot of coun­tries who feel T&T should not have rep­re­sen­ta­tion on a world fo­rum like this, wield­ing that kind of pow­er." He said Warn­er did not sleep af­ter land­ing in Zurich since he went straight to the hear­ing and meet­ings. He added: "He has a fight­ing spir­it and it's far bet­ter now than when the is­sue just start­ed, so it has cre­at­ed a very op­ti­mistic at­mos­phere for things." For tonight's ar­rival, sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, as well as sup­port­ers, are go­ing to the air­port to meet Warn­er.