Sat Ma­haraj

The gen­er­al elec­tion 2010 re­sults paint a win by a coali­tion of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties that call them­selves the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. The re­sult at the time of writ­ing is that the Part­ner­ship has won 29 seats while the PNM was re­duced to 12.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­clared the Prime Min­is­ter. This is it­self his­to­ry-mak­ing since it's the first time a woman has been elect­ed to such ex­alt­ed of­fice. This com­bined po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­di­vid­ual na­tion­al fig­ures have pulled off what some saw as an im­pos­si­bil­i­ty. But the man who brought the gov­ern­ment of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment down was re­al­ly its leader and Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning. With half his term left this man col­lapsed his gov­ern­ment for no valid po­lit­i­cal rea­son.

The Trea­sury was not quite emp­ty and oil was still fetch­ing US$70 a bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas was in de­mand. The rul­ing par­ty even boast­ed that the sta­bil­i­sa­tion fund was in ex­cess of $17 bil­lion. With 26 PNM mem­bers to the Op­po­si­tion's 15, there was no way that a vote of no-con­fi­dence in Man­ning would have brought down his ad­min­is­tra­tion, It ap­pears to me that Patrick Man­ning had lost the will to gov­ern. One of his mem­bers, Kei­th Row­ley, op­posed him be­cause a white Cana­di­an and his wife were per­mit­ted unchecked in­side our Trea­sury. Calder and Sherene Hart had the full con­fi­dence of Man­ning and in the end this may have made it im­pos­si­ble for Man­ning to con­tin­ue as a one-man gov­ern­ment.

Even with the ad­vice of his spe­cial­ly cho­sen one, his prophet­ess, our Prime Min­is­ter could no longer con­trol the af­fair of T&T from his $300 mil­lion man­sion. And Jack Warn­er was wait­ing! The con­tri­bu­tion of Jack Austin Warn­er to the pol­i­tics of T&T has to be con­sid­ered one that stands above most politi­cians in the his­to­ry of our na­tion. As vice pres­i­dent of Fi­fa, Warn­er clear­ly does not need a salary of a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. In­stead Jack, as he is fond­ly called, re­fus­es to ac­cept a month­ly salary. Jack in­deed is one na­tion­al that tru­ly has put his own per­son­al for­tune at the needs of his po­lit­i­cal par­ty which he has pledged sup­port. This, how­ev­er, is not new as po­lit­i­cal par­ties of­ten have fi­nanciers. What dis­tin­guish­es Jack from the oth­ers is that he has al­so brought his or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skills that have made him suc­cess­ful in busi­ness. This or­gan­i­sa­tion­al skill man­i­fest­ed it­self from the out­set of Jack's join­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress but it was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be show­cased in this 2010 elec­tions. The pro­fes­sion­al­ism that Jack brought to the world of foot­ball and his many busi­ness in­ter­ests was trans­posed in­to the Part­ner­ship's pol­i­tics for its ad­van­tage.

The al­most dai­ly UNC strat­e­gy meet­ings be­gan at 5 am at the of­fices of Warn­er. It is no se­cret that Jack be­gins his work day no lat­er than 4 am as he has to deal with dif­fer­ent time­lines in dif­fer­ent parts of the globe. For his in­volve­ment in op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics he was con­demned by some am­bi­tious In­di­an politi­cians, while at the same time vil­i­fied by some Afro-Tri­nis for "sell­ing out his race." One nasty ra­dio sta­tion de­scribed him as mon­key-faced. Who is this man? Jack Austin Warn­er was born in Rio Claro, south­east Trinidad, on Jan­u­ary 26, 1943. Warn­er and his three sis­ters and two broth­ers were al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly brought up by their moth­er Stel­la, a sim­ple, hard work­ing woman with a firm be­lief in God. The young Warn­er at­tend­ed St There­sa's Ro­man Catholic School in Rio Claro and lat­er, when his par­ents moved to Long­denville in 1953, he was trans­ferred to the pri­ma­ry school in the area.

Warn­er got a schol­ar­ship from Trinidad Clay Prod­ucts to at­tend the Col­lege of St Phillip's and St James, which in 1958 was changed to Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas. He lat­er at­tend­ed the Mau­si­ca Teach­ers Train­ing Col­lege and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies where he ob­tained his de­gree in his­to­ry in 1967. He be­came the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion sec­re­tary in 1973 where he stayed for the next 16 years un­til he ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in 1990. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, Warn­er be­came the strong­man of foot­ball in the coun­try.�He al­so serves as pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union and spe­cial ad­vis­er to the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion and was re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf at the con­gress in An­tigua on May 9, 2004.

In the elec­tion cam­paign of 2010, Jack's night­ly pre­sen­ta­tions on the hus­tings have been the most en­er­getic. Many sup­port­ers looked for­ward on ra­dio, tele­vi­sion and at the meet­ings to what Jack had to say. It was clear that Jack, de­spite all of his achieve­ments, did not lose the com­mon touch and the abil­i­ty to re­late to all the peo­ple.

But what was amaz­ing about Jack was his many sources of in­for­ma­tion. Some­times this was of a per­son­al na­ture, at oth­er times it was in­for­ma­tion about wrong-do­ing by the State. When the rul­ing par­ty at­tempt­ed to re­cruit An­drew Jen­nings to in­ter­vene in the elec­tion cam­paign to at­tack Warn­er, he was able to pro­duce cor­re­spon­dence re­lat­ing to the con­spir­a­cy. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple worked to bring the Part­ner­ship to pow­er. But the time and en­er­gy and re­sources in­vest­ed by Jack Warn­er must re­ceive spe­cial praise.

* Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha