Fran­cis Joseph

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er re­turned to Trinidad yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to a big wel­come at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, say­ing: "I have bro­ken no law."

Re­fer­ring to the con­tro­ver­sy that he could not be a cab­i­net min­is­ter and re­main as vice-pres­i­dent of Fi­fa, Warn­er told his sup­port­ers that he would abide with what­ev­er de­ci­sion At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan comes to. Ram­lo­gan has�asked three se­nior lawyers for their opin­ion on the con­tro­ver­sy, hop­ing to ad­vise Cab­i­net to­mor­row on the out­come. But Warn­er, the Ch­agua­nas West MP, is not daunt­ed by what the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion had to say last week. He said he re­turned from the open­ing days of the Fi­fa World Cup in South Africa to con­tin­ue the work of the peo­ple. Warn­er, who has been with Fi­fa for 28 years, lashed out at Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who raised the mat­ter. "Not con­tent­ed that he re­moved Patrick Man­ning from of­fice–he got the eas­i­est po­lit­i­cal ride in his­to­ry–he had the temer­i­ty to ac­cuse me of break­ing some law, or trans­gress­ing some code of ethics," Warn­er said.

"I ask Dr Row­ley, as I ask you to­day, what law did I break, as vice-pres­i­dent of Fi­fa, or as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port...What law did I break? If any­body can tell me what law I broke, I would, of course, be very grate­ful. Be­cause I con­tin­ue to be a law-abid­ing per­son. "What code of ethics did I trans­gress?" he asked. "If Dr Row­ley is so con­cerned about the Par­lia­men­tary Code of Ethics, I want to ask him some ques­tions this af­ter­noon. "Why was he so silent when Mr Man­ning ap­point­ed his wife, not once, not twice, but three times as a min­is­ter? "I want to ask him why he was silent when a Min­is­ter of Health had his son open phar­ma­cies all over the coun­try to sell CDAP drugs? Wasn't that code of ethics bro­ken then? "I want to ask him al­so why he was silent when an­oth­er Min­is­ter of Health had his wife take all the in­sur­ance of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to a com­pa­ny she owned? Why was he silent then?"

Warn­er, who was flanked by Min­is­ter in Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Rudy In­dars­ingh and Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, said a for­mer Min­is­ter of Health was a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of PA­HO, and there was no prob­lem. Warn­er said when Row­ley was Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, he gave ap­proval for agri­cul­tur­al land to be used for hous­ing project on a project known as Lan­date. "Was there a prob­lem then?" the Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent asked.

"You can't eat fish and fowl at the same time." Warn­er said when he was in Op­po­si­tion, he took his en­tire cheque and gave it to the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy and was paid $1 in salary. He said he in­tend­ed to do the same, give up his en­tire min­is­ter's salary to his con­stituen­cy. He said he is not paid by Fi­fa. He made it quite clear that there were 312 em­ploy­ees in Fi­fa who were paid, and he was not one of them.