…I smell the blood of a Trinidadian.
Just a little Jack and the Beanstalk reference there—you know, to break the ice.
The reporters who have been chopping at Jack’s beanstalk for years are finally enjoying the fruits of their labour at his unmasking.
“These scum have stolen the people’s sport, the cynical thieving bastards,” Warner’s nemesis Andrew Jennings told the Washington Post last week. “It’s nice to see the fear on their faces.”
But fear isn’t etched on Jack Warner’s face as far as I can see, only annoyance that his empire is collapsing and a bitter determination that many others will go down with him.
“The most corrupt operator I have encountered in a lifetime of chasing lowlifes,” Jennings wrote about Warner in the Mail on Sunday after the FBI raids in Switzerland.
“I would not dignify you with my spit. You’re garbage,” Warner had told Jennings in 2010.
“[Warner is] a cancer to Caribbean football,” Lasana Liburd, another remorseless Jack-chaser, told me last week.
And yet, despite Liburd’s annoyance that the foreign press are inaccurately labelling Warner a “beloved” man in his “native Trinidad,” there are indeed many Jack admirers.
Just look on social media to find them wishing him “God’s blessings,” and swearing they would vote for him as PM.
And hark at the deafening silence from his former cabinet minister friends.
Football is a beautiful game but it’s also economically loathsome and morally bankrupt. It is guilty of hypocrisies that have ripped it away from its history, supporters and core values.
In Trinidad, those who praise Jack walk the streets wearing the shirts of Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Filthy rich foreign clubs in a filthy rich sport.
What do Trinis care about the travails of Central FC compared to the glamour of Chelsea, or the Soca Warriors compared to the mighty Brazil?
There are many who would prefer Jack to remain free, rather than rot in an American prison cell. But these people can’t be genuine football lovers, because the great tragedy of Warner’s actions is not the negative impact on Trinidad’s international reputation (it has none) but rather the damage done to the local football, of which he was meant to be the custodian.
With the money that went into Warner’s pockets the Caribbean could have become a bigger entity in the world game, developing a structure of grass-roots academies for a sustainable future.
T&T could have become a major player in Concacaf and reached more World Cups instead of losing to Curacao for the first time in 68 years as happened last week.
Central FC and Western Connection could be big shots in the Concacaf Champions League instead of dreading qualifying games against LA Galaxy and Santos Laguna.
The T&T women’s side could have been developed and funded instead of being so cash-strapped they had to borrow money from Haiti.
And sport wasn’t the only victim. Warner diverted US$4 million away from Haiti and into his own account in Haiti’s hour of need—a story first reported in 2012 by Liburd and the Sunday Times that’s only now getting global exposure.
For these crimes—robbing from Caribbean sportspeople, fans and even victims of natural disasters—Warner shows no contrition.
And so, though a part of me wants to empathise with the man for his sheer brazen audacity, he knows that he should pay for what he has done, instead of laughing in the face of justice.
“It is a humanitarian crisis,” said Warner, after touring a devastated Port-au-Prince in 2010. “Sport is a vehicle for social transformation… Let us share this hope with Haiti so she can rise again. Fifa understands its role in inspiring a nation… Let us use sport to ignite hope.”
But those were just words. Warner doesn’t care about sport, football or people.
As Liburd reported on Wired868, T&T taxpayers ended up paying for the Haiti money-grab. The government had to bail out the TTFF after Fifa cut off its funding as a punishment to Warner.
It’s surreal now to hear Trinidad all over the media here in Britain and the rest of the world. It’s strange to think of the foreign press swarming on the island.
For a year or more I tried to get the British media to carry news from T&T, but the editors back home weren’t interested in the murder of Dana Seetahal or the government’s Constitutional Amendment Bill.
That in itself is a story. “Local news” is only of importance in this apparently globalised world when the globalising forces deem it worthy of importance.
In that light, it isn’t fair to castigate John Oliver for his self-deprecating “whitest man alive” Trini dialect shtick, broadcast on TV6.
Oliver has been interested in bringing down Fifa for some time and his journey took him to the shores of Trinidad (well, via the comfort of his HBO studio.) He doesn’t care where news comes from. Buying the airtime on Trini television was a stroke of genius that few would have thought of.
There must be US channels who operate a similar pay-per-minute system for the highest bidder. How wonderfully hilarious it would be to see Warner respond in kind with a five-minute slot on American television. I’m pretty sure he can afford the bill.