Analyst: Warner deserves his victory

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves the High Court’s de­ci­sion to per­ma­nent­ly stay the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Jack Warn­er should prompt a wider re­view of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al and ju­di­cial sys­tems, ar­gu­ing that the decade-long le­gal bat­tle ex­posed weak­ness­es in how jus­tice is ad­min­is­tered.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s rul­ing, Mo­hammed said, “I think that Dr Warn­er is very much de­serv­ing of his vic­to­ry, to be quite frank. I have no apolo­gies about that.”

Warn­er’s ex­tra­di­tion case came to an end af­ter Jus­tice Karen Reid ruled that con­tin­u­ing the pro­ceed­ings would amount to an abuse of process, bring­ing to a close lit­i­ga­tion that had reached the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.

Mo­hammed said he had con­fi­dence that the court’s con­clu­sions were well sup­port­ed.

“I am al­most 100 per cent cer­tain the judge is re­sound­ing in her judg­ment and her con­clu­sions,” he said.

Rather than fo­cus­ing sole­ly on the out­come for Warn­er, Mo­hammed said the case should reignite dis­cus­sion about con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and the need to speed up the de­liv­ery of jus­tice.

“Ten years is a long time. I con­sis­tent­ly say that we need to re­form our sys­tems to en­sure that peo­ple re­ceive jus­tice much swifter than it is de­liv­ered now.”

Mo­hammed ar­gued that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have failed to mod­ernise the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work and called on the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to take ad­van­tage of its par­lia­men­tary strength.

“Af­ter 50 years, I think we have to re-ex­am­ine the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and en­sure that this is ex­treme­ly rigid,” he said.

He added that Gov­ern­ment’s con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty presents what he de­scribed as a rare op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­take mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

“What bet­ter per­son to re­form our sys­tems than the per­son who has it for a sec­ond time in re­cent years?” Mo­hammed asked.

Ad­dress­ing the broad­er po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of the case, Mo­hammed main­tained that Warn­er had been turned in­to “a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball” in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and do­mes­ti­cal­ly. He ar­gued that po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and oth­er in­ter­ests sought to dam­age Warn­er’s pub­lic rep­u­ta­tion de­spite the for­mer min­is­ter’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to many com­mu­ni­ties.

“I feel as though peo­ple and po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go some­how used one of the most charis­mat­ic and suc­cess­ful politi­cians in the coun­try and tried to de­stroy his name and the im­pact that he’s had on so­ci­ety,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, pub­lic dis­cus­sion about Warn­er has of­ten over­looked the as­sis­tance and op­por­tu­ni­ties he pro­vid­ed to many cit­i­zens.

“We tend to make Dr Warn­er a vil­lain when, for a lot of peo­ple, he has been a hero,” he said.

“We have to give cred­it to him for hav­ing that abil­i­ty to reach out to peo­ple and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

He ac­knowl­edged that Warn­er’s pub­lic record has been con­tro­ver­sial but ar­gued it should not erase the pos­i­tive as­pects of the for­mer politi­cian’s lega­cy.

“It’s not all bad. We can’t ig­nore the good,” he said.

Draw­ing on his own ex­pe­ri­ences, Mo­hammed said his views were in­formed by years of ob­serv­ing and in­ter­act­ing with Warn­er.

“I’ve sat along­side him, I’ve in­ter­act­ed with him, I’ve worked with him, and I have ob­served him,” he said.

“I be­lieve that he was made a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, and peo­ple can in­ter­pret it how they want, but he was very de­serv­ing of his vic­to­ry.”