RE-WRITING HISTORY or SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

So Jack Warner has gone. Frankly, I don't really see that he had a choice. While I agree that the newspaper articles were serious, I also agreed with the Prime Minister's 'wait and see' attitude. You don't fire somebody because of newspaper allegations ... especially when the allegations are coming from a biased source. But the ball game changes when the allegations come from an investigating committee such as that headed by Sir David Simmons for FIFA and CONCACAF.

Mr. Warner will have to deal with these allegations now. It is not good enough to say that he will deal with them at some future date. It is absolutely necessary that he clears his name as soon as possible. If he doesn't then he will find himself politically as dead as the dodo bird, and probably in some serious legal trouble, if he is not already.

Of course, he could take a leaf out of Dr. Keith Rowley's notebook on how to deal with seemingly damning and irrefutable allegations. You will recall that Dr. Rowley, while a Minister in the Manning Regime, was associated with a land development project in Tobago known as Landate. The project was in his wife's name but everybody believed that he was the driving force behind it. In any case, the project was going on at the same time that the Scarborough General Hospital was being constructed by a very, very large local construction company called NH International which is owned by Dr. Rowley's good friend, Emile Elias. And here is where the story gets murky.

The company doing the Landate project was a very, very small Tobago based company owned by a chap called Warner (not Jack). This company subcontracted the major portion (something like 99 percent) of the Landate project to NH International. Then NH International started to remove materials and equipment from the Scarborough General Hospital site without either the knowledge or theconsent of the engineer in charge of that project and carry them up to the Landate site.

A commission of enquiry recommended that NH International be investigated by the police with a view to determining whether or not there had been any breaches of the Larceny Act. (In other words and in local parlance, to see if anybody t'ief!) But the police mysteriously could not find the relevant files and the matter has never been investigated. Further, then Prime Minister Patrick Manning never looked into the mysterious disappearance of those files either. (Incidentally, all the police had to do was read the report of the commission of enquiry andlook at the transcripts of the evidence ... and, for the record, I know that they were told where to look because I personally told them! I was involved in the commission of enquiry.)

In any case, the next thing that happened was the the Integrity Commission referred Dr. Rowley to the Director of Public Prosecutions for his involvement in that whole rather sordid affair. Dr. Rowley went to the High Court seeking a stay of the referral on the ground that the Inegrity Commission should have called him in and asked for his side of the story before referring the matter to the DPP. A High Court Judge agreed with Dr. Rowley, the members of the Integrity Commission resigned and the whole matter has come to an abrupt halt. The question of whether or not there has been criminal conduct in this affair either by Dr. Rowley or by NH International or anybody else has never been determined!

I raise this now because what is sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander. I heard Senator Al Rawi say on television yesterday that a Judge of the High Court had found Dr. Rowley completely innocent in the Landate affair. That is simply not true. The sad truth is that no investigation was ever done in that matter, either by the police nor by the "ever vigilant and fearless" press. 'Why not' is, of course, the big question. Perhaps the old Jack Warner could ask Keith Rowley how he (Rowley) managed to get that issue to die? Because nowhere have I seen a report that the Simmons Committee interviewed Mr. Warner before issuing their damning and damaging report. If that is so, then can Jack Warner also go to Court and cite Rowley's case as an authority for stopping everything in it's tracks?