Gail Alexan­der

The time has come for Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er to de­cide be­tween his Fi­fa po­si­tion and his Cab­i­net job, PNM's Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day. Im­bert was com­ment­ing on the lat­est bribery al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er who has to face a Fi­fa ethics com­mit­tee on Sun­day re­gard­ing bribery al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing Fi­fa's pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. "When he was ac­cused last month of bribery by Lord Treis­man with re­spect to the Eng­lish bid for the World Cup, it was ba­si­cal­ly a ques­tion of one man's word against an­oth­er's," Im­bert said.

"But the lat­est al­le­ga­tions are very, very dif­fer­ent as this is not a ques­tion of a dis­grun­tled coun­try that failed to win a bid to host the World Cup-this is­sue is from with­in Fi­fa." Im­bert said he found that the is­sue was mov­ing very, very quick­ly. "This lat­est con­tro­ver­sy is far more se­ri­ous than the UK is­sue as you have the head of a foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion in Fi­fa re­port­ing Warn­er and this is sup­port­ed by wit­ness­es' state­ments," he said. "My own view is that the time has come for Warn­er to de­cide if he wants to be in Fi­fa or the Gov­ern­ment.

"While Gov­ern­ment has noth­ing to do with this -one has to as­sume-they're get­ting drawn in­to the whole thing as he's a se­nior cab­i­net min­is­ter. "Every time his name is called, it's iden­ti­fied with the Gov­ern­ment and T&T. "So it must be caus­ing some anx­i­ety for Gov­ern­ment...It's reached the point where his Fi­fa po­si­tion is in open con­flict with his Gov­ern­ment post. "If this sort of thing is go­ing to hap­pen every Mon­day morn­ing-that some dis­grun­tled per­son will make al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er, it will be­come un­man­age­able. "So he has to de­cide if he will come out of the Cab­i­net and just be an MP and re­main in Fi­fa, or leave Fi­fa com­plete­ly." (GA).