It's Complicated... (In a Hard Luck Life)

Writing an article on Austin jack Warner presents many challenges as so much has been said or is being continuously said that one is, well, challenged to keep original both in content or title. His meteoric rise to the highest echelons and then expulsion from world football, his soaring to incandescent heights of national politics all despite being universally mistrusted and disliked says a lot of the sheer will of the man, and should be a caution to all who assume crossing swords with him light sport worthy of contemplation.

His ejection from FIFA was so violent it rendered most speechless and left others grappling with approximations to compare it to. How does one go from being one of the most powerful men in the world in a sport to not even being allowed to say that sport's name or to walk on a field? For his part he handled the break up with his usual fumbling stuttering poise and shared enough basket right around that has kept an entire world waiting for a tsunami of revelations that so far has never come. As a public figure he has always been quite the character and so openly despicable it became hard to despise him. Personally I have always thought that Jack's greatest strength has been his willingness to go 'all in' on a bet when others might still be hedging, scaring stronger hands away on pure bluster and bluff. His handling of then Chaguanas Mayor Suruj Rambachan created his political legend and exposed the scant value of 'calling him out.' To Jack there was nothing that you could say that could bother him, but you better be prepared to play at that same level if you want to play. Calling a bastard a bastard or a crook a crook is of no effect if it's not news, but being exposed as a closet raper-man and a political charlatan has destroyed many a budding political career in the past and was quite the risk to take. Rambachan's subsequent embrace of Warner despite saying to the world in general and his political leader in particular that he would play no part in any organization in which Jack Warner is a member demonstrated what a weak poker player he (Rambachan) was, but that is fodder for other stories, not for now.

Building on a reputation of being an 'action man' in a world where the political champions of the day were passing each other in the airport either coming from or going to medical treatment somewhere in the world, and as the majors of the majors were running out of closet space in which to hide their skeletons, Jack sensed that the opportunity to steal everything was ripe if he played his cards right. Jumping from bride to bride until he found the perfect counter for his foil, he left the broken bodies of some hitherto powerful men in local politics in his wake, including legal luminary Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, UNC founder Basdeo Panday and PNM ruler for life Patrick Manning. He challenged the Parliamentary Code of Ethics and, finding it toothless, discarded it as so much worthless paper. In the unethical world of Trinbago politics no gentlemen's club agreement was going to keep Jack Warner out as he was nobody's gentleman. Armed with a pliable and willing face as Prime Minister and an aggressively hungry and ambitious Attorney General Jack was now in his element; able to bequeath fortunes or destroy lives with but a gesture, Jack was now master of all he surveyed.

But wait. As would be expected, momentum founded on hubris usually encounters bumps along the way and this is where we find ourselves as of this writing - With rumors that at least one of his sons is being held against his will in another jurisdiction buzzing about for months, the local media has been 'instructed' not to report on it and so far they have acquiesced. There is no telling what they may eventually do once firm evidence becomes available, but for now the businesses behind the media outfits are not yet ready to throw caution to the wind and risk ending up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. For their part the foreign media seem to have zero interest in it as a story if there is in fact one, so for now, speculation and water cooler gossip will have to suffice. His handling of the nation's security apparatus has left some members of the public fuming and has given the comatose Opposition a new lease on life. Rumors of the creation of militia squads outside of the jurisdiction of the police service has given many a cause for quiet concern even as they look one to the other for answers to the question, what do we do now?

The Prime Minister, in whom all Constitutional authority resides seems to be falling out of love with him and, despite the public's misgivings regarding any role she may have in fact played in the affair, it is ultimately to her the people must turn to for any reprieve from the feared coming storm. With crime hitting high notes on a scale never before imagined there are others who are starting to come around on the side of being damned if they do because they've been damned before to no avail. What happens next? The government (of which he Jack Warner is an integral part) appears committed to making the army a quasi-para-military force complete with powers of arrest despite strong reservations from all quarters. Adding that to the already burgeoning numbers of the police service, this puts a lot of fire power in the hands of a government ostensibly controlled by a man with a questionable past and even more questionable intentions, power that could be used for much good (and vindicate him as a national servant with patriotic virtue) or power to do much bad(now where do you think the smart money is?).

Jack's ultimate power seems to lie in the fact that he does not care what anyone thinks of him or whether we love or hate him. In the straight up numbers game of Trini politics it has always come down to support in exchange for 'what's in it for me,' and as no one plays that game better than Jack, we're about to get much more than we bargained for. This lack of ethics at the most base level is believed to be what kept Basdeo Panday and Patrick Manning in power in their respective parties for all those years, but they are about to be eclipsed by a master showman extraordinaire. Regardless, and of what is about to happen next (and to paraphrase Bette Davis) -  “Strap yourselves in boys, we're in for a bumpy ride....”