Former vice-president of world football governing body FIFA, Jack Warner, says the organisation is engaged in a hostile takeover of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and it must be stopped. Warner said FIFA had “no locus standi or even hierarchical relationship” with the CFU. In a statement yesterday, Warner said he was breaking his silence on FIFA matters after an unconstitutional CFU congress was held in Zurich on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Warner said he would be making further statements next Wednesday and at other unspecified dates. He said his action might cause him to be summoned before the Ethics Committee, “but I am no longer prepared to sit back and watch from the sidelines, while a few men destroy an entire region for their own selfish and self-serving motives.”
Warner, who is the Minister of Works and Infrastructure in the People’s Partnership Government, resigned from FIFA after being called to appear before the FIFA Ethics Committee to answer allegations of wrongdoing, during a CFU meeting in Port-of-Spain. He said this week’s congress in Zurich was unconstitutional. “At this unconstitutional CFU congress, certain decisions were taken by the FIFA president—decisions which the presidents of 26 of the 30 national associations present accepted without even consulting their members who they purported to represent.”
Warner said the leaders from Anguilla, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica and T&T did not support FIFA “and its unethical actions.” He said some of the unethical decisions accepted at the meeting were:
• the appointment of a Normalisation Committee to execute various tasks on behalf of the CFU;
• the appointment of an interim CFU general secretary;
• review of the new CFU statutes to be proposed by the CFU Legal Committee;
• preparation of the 2011 Annual Report;
• setting the date for a CFU extraordinary congress to approve the new CFU statutes—such date to be no later than 90 days after December 20, 2011; and
• appointing a Legal Committee, a Finance Committee and a Football Committee.
Warner said: “Never in the history of the FIFA has an organisation that is not a member of FIFA been subject to the ‘law’ of FIFA.”
He said the congress failed to discuss issues such as:
• the status of the FIFA Development Office in the Caribbean and the termination by the FIFA, without reason, of the contracts of all officers of this office; and
• the termination, by the FIFA, of the contracts of the T&T FIFA Referee Development Officers Ramesh Ramdhan and Merere Gonzales without explanation (and) without reason.
“In one fell swoop, the Caribbean football leadership has now undone its struggle of some 33 years and has disrespected the entire region,” Warner said. “The arrogance with which the FIFA continues to ride roughshod over duly elected officials of both the CFU and the Concacaf is not just unethical but plain outright immoral. “It demonstrates the crass disrespect to the independence and sanctity of the constitutions of both organisations because the FIFA imposes on these two organisations its will which is neither recognised by FIFA’s constitution nor the constitutions of the CFU and the Concacaf.” Warner in his seven-page statement insisted: “This type of behaviour must never be allowed to continue without a voice of dissent being raised against such malfeasance.”
