Mark Bas­sant

“The main po­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tion will cir­cu­late around the po­lit­i­cal will of the T&T Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue with the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings to have Jack Warn­er ex­tra­dit­ed to the USA.”

That is the opin­ion of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Prof Hamid Ghany in re­sponse to the re­cent Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion this week, which al­lowed the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings to con­tin­ue in the lo­cal mag­is­trate’s court de­spite Warn­er los­ing his fi­nal le­gal ef­fort to pre­vent ex­tra­di­tion.

Ghany said this was cru­cial in light of what had been hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries where for­mer FI­FA ex­ec­u­tives, who were joint­ly charged in the US 2015 in­dict­ment for cor­rup­tion and bribery, had not ac­ced­ed to the US re­quest.

“Some oth­er coun­tries have not ex­tra­dit­ed per­sons named by the USA af­ter then-At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Loret­ta Lynch an­nounced the po­si­tion of the US De­part­ment of Jus­tice in the FI­FA mat­ter in May 2015. That will be the key ram­i­fi­ca­tion.”

Ghany was queried about the rul­ing Peo­ple Na­tion­al Move­ment’s si­lence af­ter the Privy Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion, but he didn’t think they had been. “The Gov­ern­ment has not been silent on the mat­ter at all. Al­most as soon as the judg­ment was de­liv­ered in Lon­don at the Privy Coun­cil, the Gov­ern­ment, through the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, is­sued a press re­lease stat­ing that the law will take its course. The Gov­ern­ment is on record with a com­mit­ment to fol­low the law and have Jack Warn­er ex­tra­dit­ed.”

How­ev­er, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, al­so a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and at­tor­ney at law, had a vary­ing view of the PNM’s per­ceived si­lence.

“The mat­ter is sub-ju­dice and in the sub­stan­tive pro­ceed­ing, they ruled on a pre­lim­i­nary point of law on whether he can be ex­tra­dit­ed to the US. The gov­ern­ment has to be care­ful of aim­ing state­ments. The AG has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play in these ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings,” she said.

In the same stead, both Ghany and Ram­per­sad were asked about the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ si­lence as well on the mat­ter and if they still felt a sense of loy­al­ty to Warn­er af­ter he had helped the UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship to win the 2010 elec­tion.

Ghany said, “The UNC and Warn­er part­ed com­pa­ny in 2013 af­ter he was dis­missed from the Cab­i­net and Warn­er sub­se­quent­ly formed the ILP (In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty) and won the Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion (which he forced by his res­ig­na­tion as the UNC MP for the area). Warn­er and his par­ty al­so com­pet­ed against the UNC in the St Joseph by-elec­tion that year as well as the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions that year. He and his par­ty al­so con­test­ed the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion against the UNC. There is noth­ing re­al­ly in this judg­ment about which the UNC will need to of­fer any com­ment.”

Dr Ram­per­sad of­fered a sim­i­lar re­sponse stat­ing, “There has been loy­al­ty by some fac­tions of the UNC. But many of them are not ac­tive politi­cians in the UNC any more. You had, at a time, Dr Fuad Khan asked for Jack to come back. But when that fall­out took place most of them were no longer ac­tive. There may be some ground sup­port from the UNC peo­ple for Warn­er, like how he got sup­port on the ground when he ran for Ch­agua­nas West un­der the ILP. But I do not see any rea­son why they must make a state­ment with things so volatile and con­tentious at this time.”

The Sun­day Guardian asked if the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment was in any way in­debt­ed to Warn­er.

Ram­per­sad said, “In­debt­ed­ness should not play a role in the law tak­ing its course. I think at that time there were many op­pos­ing voic­es against the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, not just Jack Warn­er that led to their demise.”

How­ev­er, Ghany had a con­trast­ing view on the mat­ter.

“The PNM does owe Warn­er a debt of some grat­i­tude for his third-par­ty as­sis­tance in un­der­min­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment as his sear­ing at­tacks against them were dam­ag­ing dur­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. Warn­er al­so car­ried the fight against the PP Gov­ern­ment in the 2010-2015 Par­lia­ment in the fi­nal months of its ex­is­tence when the PNM de­cid­ed to boy­cott sit­tings of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives fol­low­ing the then Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to move a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Warn­er was the sole MP who was ask­ing Ques­tions to Min­is­ters as well as Ur­gent Ques­tions and par­tic­i­pat­ing in de­bates which kept the an­ti-PP nar­ra­tive alive. The PNM was not crit­i­cal of Warn­er dur­ing this pe­ri­od, un­like ear­li­er times when their at­tacks on Warn­er were frontal and ad­ver­sar­i­al. Para­graphs 92 and 93 of the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment do pro­vide a po­lit­i­cal con­trast be­tween the ac­tions of the PP Gov­ern­ment At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in re­fus­ing Warn­er’s ‘rep­re­sen­ta­tions’ be­fore the ‘Au­thor­i­ty To Pro­ceed’ (ATP) was is­sued when com­pared to the ac­tions of the PNM Gov­ern­ment At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion, who of­fered Warn­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make ‘rep­re­sen­ta­tions’ be­fore is­su­ing the ATP. These were dif­fer­ing ex­er­cis­es of min­is­te­r­i­al dis­cre­tion. “

In light of what had tran­spired over the last few days the ques­tion of whether Jack Warn­er was still hold­ing cards close to his chest as it per­tained to the UNC and PNM was posed.

Ghany said ac­cord­ing to para­graph 96 of the Privy Coun­cil’s judg­ment it sug­gests that there is still some le­gal ground to be cov­ered.

The fi­nals sen­tences in the Privy Coun­cil’s judg­ment stat­ed:

“The cross-ap­peal gives rise to con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the ex­ec­u­tive, the leg­is­la­ture, and the courts in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Since the ap­peal must, in any event, be dis­missed the Board does not con­sid­er it nec­es­sary in this ap­peal to ad­dress those is­sues.”

Ghany said these clos­ing sen­tences of the judg­ment sug­gest that there is room for fresh le­gal chal­lenges to be raised by Warn­er if the ATP is is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T against him.

Ghany said Warn­er seemed to hint at this in the state­ment he is­sued af­ter the judg­ment when he said: “I con­tin­ue to have con­fi­dence in my team led by Fyard Ho­sein Se­nior Coun­sel, and I have ad­vised them to con­tin­ue to press my case on the three re­main­ing stages of these pro­ceed­ings.”

“It would ap­pear that Warn­er still has some cards to play,” Ghany said.

But Ram­per­sad be­lieves that Warn­er may be bluff­ing. “If he had cards he would have played them al­ready. Jack Warn­er is an as­tute politi­cian and for a Caribbean man of Afro de­scent where he reached in FI­FA, he had to be in­tel­li­gent. He was com­mit­ted to the sport and sport in gen­er­al and he would not make it to the next high­est of­fice in FI­FA. What is left to be seen is how his at­tor­neys are now go­ing to con­front the de­ci­sion of the Privy Coun­cil. If there is a loop­hole to avoid the ex­tra­di­tion his at­tor­neys will have a crit­i­cal role to play in the fu­ture of this mat­ter.”