WRITING THE BOOK: PATH OF PEACE
by Ariti Jankie

I don’t know how else to be but to be myself. Blame it on running wild and free in the sugarcane fields and lagoon lands in the shadow of my parents and elders.
I was circulating “HUSH. DON’T CRY” and Ravi Ji told me that I should write my parents story. “In the Footsteps of Rama” resulted. Both books did very well by the way. Then I took footsteps to Vijai Sadai, and he asked me to write the history of the Raja Yoga in Trinidad.
Immediately, in my head, I had the book already laid out. It would be literature instead of history as all history in Trinidad today is emotional and still in the making, particularly the Raja Yoga.
What made me more excited was the handful of men and women who were born in good homes and carried a streak of purity in their inner spiritual reservoir.  I had met them along the way and bonded naturally.
My challenge was to use a universal language of the spirit in the hope that it would inspire the younger generation who may not be blessed with that inner strength that came to us through the gentle inculcations of a different type of parenting. I wanted the words to fall gentle by a light drizzle of rain, soft and silent. And I wanted the book to read like we speak in Trinidad; a kind of spontaneous literature.
And something else happened when I almost complete the book; a disruption that brought out a ritual that I didn’t quite know I possessed.
Readers who are in my generation would remember our mothers cooking on the chulha.
First thing on morning, Ma would pick up the pan with a rag and soaked dirt from beneath the chulha (the chulha was on a stand). She would lepay the chulha with the rag, lay the sticks to catch the fire easily and when she lighted the match, shesaid a prayer. Then she began to cook. And when finished, she would take a lotha of water and sprinkle it around the fire, bow and then pull out the remaining pieces of wood to out on its own.
From that tradition, we got food that was finger licking good. I’d say it was not cooking with wood and on a chula but cooking with LOVE.
As I wrote “Path of Peace” I realize that the tradition was steeped in my consciousness and like cooking I took the ritual to my writing.
PATH OF PEACE was a working title but the Raja Yoga boss liked it and wanted to keep it. I interviewed men and women and told their stories to preserve their history. I tremble with the desire to place before you a dish that would allow you, the reader to see the importance of spirituality in our lives versus religion.
I started with Hemlata and our friendship, went to Brother Harry, Vijai, Khem Jokhoo, Sister Jasmine, Kay Narinesingh, Uma, Chandra, Geeta, Garfield King, Anthony Weekes and ended with an almost life story of Silvereen Mangroo, a young village girl Avocat.
I made friends along the way and now “PATH OF PEACE” is out of the printery and ready to be launched.
Let me know what you think by emailing aritijankie@gmail.com or your comments at the end of this text.

My friend Bud

by Zorina Shah

Bud (right) with his friend Lynn Ludlow

I had lost touch with Bud several times during the 34 years I had known him. Once I tracked him down to China during his tenure as Fulbright Professor at a university there. I found him in Oporto, Portugal by calling the US embassy. I was in Frankfurt in 1989 for Buchmesse and woke up on October 18 (Frankfurt is nine hours ahead) to the news of the North California earthquake. Bud and his wife, Georgette, lived in the Bay Area. I tried desperately to contact them through San Francisco State University where he had been Chairman of the Department of Journalism. I finally made contact with the new chair and she told me Bud was no longer there. A couple weeks later I received the information through snail mail. Bud had retired and he and Georgette had moved to Mercer Island, Washington. I wrote. He wrote back. Serendipity, he said. They had moved before the 7.1 earthquake hit.
Writer that he was he painted the most beautiful picture of the view from his sun deck, Mt. Rainier, Lake Washington. I don't remember exactly what he said about the Puget Sound.
Bud was my journalism professor at the Caribbean Institute of Mass Communications, Mona Campus. He was driven around by Assistant Professor Vivien Carrington until he and Georgette acquired a VW Rabbit and she drove him around instead. I started off not caring too much about him, maybe the little halting speech, maybe the face which reddened too easily in the blazing Jamaica sun.  He adjusted quickly and so did I. He had a wealth of experience in newspaper production, but boy, was he on the ball with the writing techniques and nose for a story? He could show you how to first get the information and then how to use that information to craft a wonderful story. During that time we were able to look at global coverage of Jonestown massacre in Guyana, the Grenada Revolution and the Iranian Revolution.
Bud could tear your story to bits in the kindest way. Most people fell for it. I knew what he was doing and worked hard for his approval. I was rewarded with editing the department newspaper. He referred to Marcia Mentore (Erskine) and me as "the dyad from Trinidad".
I maintained contact with him because I had promised to before leaving Jamaica, It would drop off, sometimes for months, and start again. The last time I found Michele Liebes on the internet. I knew her name. That's my father alright, she said. He had moved from Washington State to Bethesda, Maryland after Georgette died. I called often. Sometimes he wouldn't be there. Like when he had gone to take Georgette's ashes to Grenoble in the French Alps. Her family is French. He met her while working for Stars and Stripes and I like to think it was around this time http://www.stripes.com/news/foreign-entrants-pace-tour-de-france-cyclists-1.122021.
During the war young Bud was a waist gunner on B-24 raids into Germany. I thought about it often, but strangely, I never asked. The halting speech may have been linked to fragments of shrapnel in his chest although I have read elsewhere it may not have been his chest at all.
At the end of the war Bud's combat unit was in Rome and he was one of several allied officers sent to an audience with Pope Pius XII at the Vatican. Twenty four years old, meeting with the pope, what else would he remember? "My feet sank into the carpet". I found a picture on the History Channel website and hoped to ask if he was in it.
On another occasion no one answered the phone in Maryland for weeks. Michele had died. I had communicated with them weekly during her illness. Many times I would speak to her when he was out. I often leaned on the church wall across the way from where I live on Sunday evenings for the call. We talked politics, global economy, US foreign policy, the effect of internet on print media. I also read the books chosen by his club for review. He sent me newspaper clippings and books in the mail starting way back with copies of feed/back, the review of newspapers in Northern California when he was at SFSU. He once asked me what I thought the greatest threat to US national security was. "George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld", I said.
We had been in contact for about seven years, I called, he sent email messages and the regular packages. When I returned from an assignment at Guyana Times/ TV Guyana, and overwhelmed by the loss of my own nephew, I couldn't find Bud. I only knew the first names of his two grand daughters. At first the phone rang, then it was disconnected. Late last year I googled BH Liebes. I found two items, one at http://thetardytimes.blogspot.com/2009/11/going-to-mall.html written by his friend Lynn Ludlow and this other http://storify.com/hfinberg/bud-liebes-journalism-professor-extraordinaire for Bud's 91st birthday.
I try most times not to feel regret, but it is impossible to communicate how sorry I am that I ignored my instincts and did not comment on or share the tributes from his students at San Francisco State. I have written so many email messages over the last year with no response. On the night of Sunday, February 10, a few days ago, I googled Bud again. This time I typed his first name Bernard and I saw it. It never occurred to me before that I should type his first name. I had asked once what the BH represented. He told me. "If your middle name was Hxxxxx you wouldn't use it either", he said.
Bud was a real person and I never saw him as anything else. I know that because not once in 25 years did I ever think that he was Jewish. It suddenly dawned on me one day while I was at the University Chaplaincy in St. Augustine, Trinidad and I was talking to my friend Fr. Michel de Verteuil about the Middle East. Fr. Michel is the closest I have come to finding Bud in all the people I know, but for all his scholarship and humanity I always told him he was a distance behind Bud. Next phone call I asked and he was surprised that it had taken me so long to figure it out. I had failed the test, I said. I had been a great fan of war time movies and I'd tell him about the ones I had seen, mainly of family of holocaust victims and how they tried to adjust in their new lives. He particularly liked my story about Paula Richman, Professor of South Asian religions at Oberlin College, Ohio. When Paula told me she was Jewish, I said I knew from the name. "That's not how we got this name. When my grandfather arrived here, he was asked by immigration why he had come. To be a rich man, he said. They recorded his name as Richman."
So many things in the last year reminded me of Bud, the front page of The Irish Catholic  http://issuu.com/mellyg/docs/oct_18th_full_issue or a reference on a Jamaican website to the late Belgian artist Claude Rahir. Rahir's murals grace the walls of the administration building and the Institute of Mass Communication at Mona. In 2007 Bud sent me a clipping from the Jamaica Gleaner with a story I had written about the artist. I offered to contact Rahir only to discover that he had died on the same day the envelope was postmarked in Washington. We missed out on talk about the 2012 US presidential elections, something we had done several times before; the 2008 campaign was an exciting time. Whenever I thought of US politics, I imagined I was talking to him.
I never gave a thought to Bud  dying. He was always cheerful. He always sounded as if I could find him if I needed guidance, as I always had. For me everyone else was mortal, but not Bud: February 19, 1921 - May 01, 2012

FLY ON THE WALL

He: Welcome Madam Secretary

She: My pleasure your highness

He: And how was the trip to Cambodia?

She: A most suitable decoy milord. Thank you for this week of distraction

He: Never mind we will be well paid. You will sink deeper into debt for it, but we will be well paid.

She: The press has put Petraeus on the back burner. Our people love a war more than a sex scandal.

He: Do you really think so? Have you forgotten the Jewish girl so easily?

She: I have no need to remember her. I don’t even remember her name. But my true love proved that a cruise missile provides more romance for our people. Those 70 he fired at Jalalabad after the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi, I have learnt a lot from that. This pretty boy you would rather not see was such an innocent, but I have taught him well.

He: I had so hoped you would get through those primaries. My people stood firm, but too many don’t want a woman to lead. We are light years ahead of you. Every country in the world will have a female leader but not yours.  I fear you will always remain a backward society living it up while you are waiting on everyone else to bail you out. The Chinese? Goodness, the Chinese? You hurt me Shiksa.

She: Backward?  The most progressive society on earth?

He: Yet half of your people wanted to be stuck in the 18^th century with that moron, sorry mormon. You were saved by immigrants, Hispanics, blacks. At least you can be honest about that.

She: We are going through a difficult time, but we are a strong people, we will weather the storm

He: Speaking of weather…

She: Forget it, forget it (holding her fingers to her temples)

He: How can I? All this carbon we have put into the atmosphere these past few days, all that dust and rubble that Palestinian children must inhale. It not so kosher right? I cringe when I think what they are drinking for water. I cringe everyday when I think of how they live. That refugee camp in Khan Younis. How do they even survive? We are going after them before this ceasefire you know. They run to Khan Younis to avoid our fire power, but they can’t hide. I cringe more at what that klutz Bushwa did in Iraq. Three miles of the Tigris on fire in one night. Bushwa makes my interior minister sound like a sissy when he says "We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water." I bet you never read that in the New York Times. But we know you share that dream too.

She: Your pre-election fun is coming to an end?

He: Not so fast, let me enjoy it. When I am finished my people will be so afraid no else can save them.  They may even mark “for life” on the ballot next to my name

What’s the hurry, two months to go. I could put the fear of death into my people and let them think it is those hoodlums from Gaza with their godzilla rockets. We show the same 10 over and over on television, we let the siren scare them. When they are hiding in the tunnels they don’t know that 20 godzillas and 20 from the iron dome you paid for make up 40. They don’t know the difference between a $40,000 intercepting nothing  falling near to them and a $1k godzilla.

She: You use Iron Dome to ….. you are wasting our money like that?

He: Our money Madam, we are working hard for it. What is a mere $40,000 to give ourselves a reason to kill a few barbarians?

She: Don’t say barbarians milord, we are insisting on “terrorists”.

He: You are insisting? I start a war to give you a reason to bring three warships in the Med, and you are insisting? How will you get supplies to Syrian rebels………
She: Quiet, walls have ears

He: Not my walls Shiksa… You failed your poster boy in Benghazi big time Madam Secretary.  You don’t want to show a hand in Syria so he paid the price. Now the world knows Madam and you tilt your head in the air and walk.

She: Don’t get personal

He: I say what I want Madam, you need me more than I need you. You think we want your Caterpillar bulldozer to go into Gaza. We could use our own. We just need to remind them that you are with us every step of the way.

She: When you are ready let me know, I will talk to our allies

He: Allies…hahahaha………..poor Saddam.... hahahaha...Hosni....hahahaha.......Pahlavi.....hahaha....Abdullah your turn is coming....hahahaha

City of San Fernando: 21st Century Engineering

On September 17, a container taking goods to Modern Caribbean on Torrance Street, San Fernando crashed into the pavement in front of the Catholic Church and 25 feet away from the entrance to the primary school. The exercise of removing the truck took about one hour as it had to be hoisted from the hole created by the damage to the pavement. The removal was supervised by personnel from Modern Caribbean.
They completed the task in twilight leaving it in the following condition

I called the City Police to ask for some protection for people who were not aware of the damage. Me: A truck ran into the pavement in front of the Mon Repos Catholic Church. He: Where is the Catholic Church? Me: On Torrance Street. He: Where is Torrance Street, ma'am? Me: You are working in the City and you don't know where Torrance Street is?
I hung up and called the Mon Repos Police asking for some tape to be put around the hole. They obliged some two hours later.
The following day, September 18, I called the City Police to lodge a complaint and I was laughed at for my suggestion that the officers may require refresher courses. I called the City Engineering Department. I called the Mayor's Office and I called my Councillor. He, Shaka Joseph, responded promptly to voicemail he received and in no time a truck arrived to view the damage. The truck returned to place two barrels.

Today is October 3. End of story

Rest in Peace my brother, Ashram

Ashram (left) with Ajit Praimsingh

ASHRAM MAHARAJ
From Ariti Jankie, Miami

Two years ago, my brother Teekaram died of a heart attack. He was the same age as Ashram and so much alike that after his passing, Ashram became my Teekaram.
I watched him smoking cigarettes with love in my heart and saw his brown eyes light up each time we met. He had a spot on the floor where he used to lie down to watch television, had a most impressive collection of music, made the best tea and coffee and cooked delicious and elaborate meals to serve his guests just like my beloved Teekaram.
Waking up late on Monday ( November 7) morning after a sinus attack, I read the first email from Phoolo Danny.
“Ashram Maharaj passed.”
It could have been a mistake, I thought.
The second email from Loaknath Dubey, a friend of both Ashram and myself stated, “I already went down on my knees and said a prayer for this brother.”
Rajnie Ramlakhan’s email account showed up and was signed by Ramdath Jagessar. He wanted to know more.
Ajit Praimsingh was comprehensive as he always is and there was no doubt that Ashram Maharaj whom I said goodbye to just three weeks ago at the door to Mario’s Pizza at Mid Centre Mall, Chaguanas was no more.
Alone at home in Miami, I could feel the scream fighting to surface; so deep was the grief and like every other time when I lost someone dear, I lit the deeya and calmed down to speak in spirit to Ashram.
I saw him smile and the questions disappeared. My heart was filled with a treasure chest of memories he had given to me especially in the last year following the release of his book, “Green Card Doolahin”.
We had travelled to Cedros for Balki Pooja, spent the day at Nu-Image Simplex Complex in New Grant for Chokka Fest, met at Brothers Road Recreation Ground on Indian Arrival Day (May 30) and after the formalities rushed to Mid Centre Mall Car Park, Chaguanas for Mere Desh celebrations. Ashram also hosted a dinner for visiting professor Frank Birbalsingh and afterwards I sat with him and Rajnie Ramlakhan who passed away recently for a confidential chat. We were members of the India Alumni Association of Trinidad and Tobago and on Independence Day joined an equally precious friend Doolarchan Hanoomansingh and Jairaj Singh for a concert at Williamsville Secondary School.
With Ashram the distribution of my novel “Hush, Don’t Cry” ran parallel with “Green Card Doolahin”. He dropped off books for me and collected cheques and I contacted sales.
In Ashram, I had my brother Teekaram who loved to drive as much as I hated to.
Ashram introduced me to a group of writers who met for a second volume of “The Contributors,” a Chaguanas Borough Corporation project and though he opted out of writing profiles having written more than 40 pieces in the first volume, took me to interview the Sri Kishen Chowtal Group in Felicity. We spent many hours with the all-male group at the mandir. He was also with me when I visited the families of the late Noor Mohammed and Mahadeo Vyas both of Charlieville. We went to the home of Veera Bhajan where Ashram found that Veera’s mother was from his village and at the Vyas residence, introduced himself to Mahadeo’s widow as the son of one of her childhood friends.
We interviewed real estate guru, Vishnu Tikasingh who had found a house for Ashram at New Settlement, off the Caroni Savannah Road, Charlieville. Vishnu made an offer to repurchase Ashram’s home. We found Dr Vishnu Jeelal and spent hours talking about our days in India. Ashram spent seven years at Hyderabad while Vishnu was at Delhi and Kashmir. I lived in New Delhi for fourteen years.
Ashram went to look for coconut water to buy while my son Arjan and I fixed a tyre. He bought chocolate tea at Mario’s and urged me to drink it instead of coffee to keep him company as he had his breakfast.
There are mango shoots growing around my house at Realize Junction Road, Princes Town from the seeds of luscious mangoes he filled in bags for me during the last mango season. And the last time I visited his home three weeks ago, he gave me one of the avocados he had purchased at the market. We both had won two pineapples each at the Chokka Fest in a competition where we had to name the singer and the movie of songs that were played. There wasn’t an Indian song, Ashram did not know. He told me the answers and like excited children we went up to collect the pineapple prize and have our photograph clicked by Hanooman.
And while travelling home, Ashram exchanged the big pineapples I had gotten for his smaller ones but then I went to his home as I had been doing almost every week and ate most of the pineapple that was served by his girlfriend Nalini.
As we drove about, Ashram related the short stories he planned to write. One was on cricket and another on funerals.
He was full of humor and had a cute way of telling his stories. One day when he was out jogging, he saw a heap of long play CDs thrown out by the roadside.
“I got so excited. I gone easy, easy and pick them up and walked slowly home,” he said with that twinkle in his eyes.
He was an idealist and perfectionist. He had housework to do every weekend. He was precise and punctual. He drove his friends crazy at times. He also had the biggest heart was so proud of his nephews and nieces who had scored at Mastana Bahar. He went to Yagnas where his brother officiated and together we visited his niece in Princes Town who was married to Pundit Mukesh.
All night long, I thought of the times I had spent with Ashram and this morning as I sit down to share some of my precious moments with this friend/brother, I realize how close we had become and how I am now left to lose Teekaram all over again.
Ashram, go with God and don’t forget your friends as we will never forget you. In spirit you will be among us and your contribution will not be lost. I wanted to be there as they take your body to your home in Charlieville and later to Penal before going to Mosquito Creek. I have been spared this sorrow. Go my friend and we shall meet in the next life once again.

Water more than flour!

The Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) is the worst public utility in Trinidad and Tobago. That is precisely why I wonder how public servants could elect a man from WASA to head their trade union. Tells us something about public servants doesn't it? When he settles for one percent or something close to that they get vex.

On Thursday, June 9, 2011 every one I met in the street went on and on about the brown water in the taps. Water did not get brown when Horace GRIMES became CEO of WASA, it became browner.

But now he is gone. The new CEO, appointed when the People's Partnership came into power, is a former public utilities minister Ganga Singh. I don't know if anyone remembers that when Ganga was minister he promised water for all by 2000. Nor do I know if you would remember that as Minister Ganga shared a platform with Kamla Persad-Bissessar in her Siparia constituency and they got carried away about who could lay more pipe. It is obvious therefore that Kamla was satisfied with Ganga's pipe-laying promise and performance for her to name him WASA CEO when she became Prime Minister in 2010.

The story I want to tell involves a broken sewer main in the middle of an intersection in my street i.e Torrance and Moody Stuart streets. I first called WASA on March 10 to report the leak. I did not give my phone number so I assume that their system captured it because they once called to get directions. That intersection is extremely busy since the first part of the street is a no entry. There is a Roman Catholic Church and school on my street. I pleaded with WASA to repair the leak before the Easter weekend and then I pleaded with them to repair the leak before school reopened. I have had to witness a parishioner going to Easter vigil get splashed with sewer water and school boys, being boys, kicking the water on each other in the afternoon.
On April 22, WASA finally sent a crew to "examine" the leak. Maybe the leak passed the test because nothing happened. I kept calling every single day. Sometimes I waited on the line for 10 minutes before it timed out and disconnected the call.

Well the news is that on June 1 when I reached home in the afternoon there was a huge pile of dirt in the middle of the intersection, three pieces of stick planted in the dirt and some tape tied around the stick. Heavy rainfall threw down the stick, cars began to pass on the dirt, the leak became worse and the minor water main leak began flooding the street. Great work don't you think? Take the prize WASA!

I couldn't stop calling. My final call was on Thursday June 9. The conversation was as follows:
WASA: (Pleasantries etc) Theron speaking
ME: Good Day Terrance
WASA: No it is Theron
ME: Sorry Theron. Your recording says my call may be recorded for quality of service. I want you to record my call because I want quality service. I am calling from (and a summary of my efforts since March 10). Theron tried to ask me for my phone number so he could pull up the report (s)
ME: (continuing) No let me finish this because I am only going to say it once. If I come home on Monday and this leak is not fixed I am going to walk around San Fernando with a baseball bat and anytime I see a WASA vehicle taking children to school, or taking women to the grocery or parked in front of a rum shop I will smash the windscreen
I hang up.

Lo and behold on Friday morning three huge trucks with plenty workers drive up. So am I happy? Well when I return in the evening having gone with my friends to Maracas Bay: SAME OLD STORY. Not even a sign of work and residents were willing to tell me that the men were there all morning.

So this week it is me and my baseball bat.
Because I can't find my Member of Parliament Patrick Manning. There is sewage leaking on my street while he walks from Port of Spain making a pappyshow of himself. For months he sat in the parliament, DUMB, never opened his mouth and when he finally did he talked nonsense about the Prime Minister's $150 million and where she got the money to build it. Well no wonder he got suspended from the parliament. And his few supporters have the nerve to put tape on their mouths (in a protest) and carry placards saying "Give us back our voice".
In 40 years, Manning has never represented me. On the contrary I have been doing his work and that of every PNM councillor while his supporters have been acquiring CEPEP contracts and sitting on state boards.

Before the 2007 general elections his (and Junior Regrello's) thousands of San Fernando supporters passed on Coffee Street with cocoyea brooms (made from dried coconut palm leaves) chanting "It is sweeping time". Now that the PNM has been swept from power he could not muster 200 supporters to walk with him.
Well this is his opportunity to work for his constituents. I wish he would call up Ganga Singh and talk pipe.
Now does anyone remember what his comments were when (as Prime Minister) he returned from having heart surgery in Cuba? "The boy wukking. Ask Hazel" and he turns to his wife.
Well start wukking boy, start wukking.

The FIFA Family

The issues surrounding Jack Warner's name being called in the latest FIFA scandal have different meanings for different micro groups and for the massive group of football fans around the world.

Jack Warner was fingered in a sting initiated by the Secretary General of CONCACAF, the American Chuck Blazer. In this sting, no law enforcement officers were involved. The findings were intended to manipulate FIFA executives and influence the outcome of elections on June 1 in Zurich. At the time the prime contenders for the post of FIFA president were the incumbent, the aging but not yet doddery Sepp Blatter, and Mohammad Bin Hammam, president of the Asian Football Confederation. Bin Hammam, under pressure from the Emir of Qatar stepped down so the 2022 World Cup (in Qatar) would not be placed in jeopardy.

The allegations that made the front page of newspapers around the world revolved around packets of cash being handed out to officials of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) on May 11 at the Hyatt Regency in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

For us in Trinidad and Tobago the concerns are linked to Warner's role in government where he wields substantial power having been a financier of the ruling party and where he now serves as Minister of Works and Transport. When the government was formed one year ago the main question was whether Warner should continue to serve on FIFA's Executive Committee. The government sought legal opinion. No consideration was given to FIFA's image, that the organisation uses its ability to attract lucrative sponsorships and generate huge profits as the answer to all its critics. No consideration was given to Warner's own ability to court controversy. It was only a matter of time before the problem blew up in our faces. "Innocent until proven guilty" is not the issue here, there are too many questions to be answered and Warner has been dodging those questions while he releases tidbits of information about Sepp Blatter and Jerome Valcke.

Warner's advice to CFU countries to support Blatter for the presidency may well earn him a slap on the wrist and, politican that he is, he will walk back into the fold (family) as if nothing has happened. The ensuing chaos in CONCACAF is a clear indicaton that for all the money and big salaries floating around, these guys are pitiful. The hirings and firings since Warner's suspension show clearly that this is just another ball game, the football going from one end of the field to the other... football at its worst.

Football in the region is also in a sorry state. We send teams to the World Cup based on group qualification, but how much have we developed? Our football is stagnant. We play out the preliminary round at the World Cup, maybe get two teams in the round of 16 and the story ends there. The scenario is predictable. Mexico and USA and some other third rate CONCACAF team. We work up a storm here in the region. We go to Germany or South Africa.... or Russia and Qatar....and we come back with drooping shoulders. Mexico...imagine Mexico... just another passenger in the World Cup. Our regional teams can not compare in any way to the European teams but Warner wants to campaign for a fourth qualifier from the region. That is not improvement in the sport. That is showbiz and benefits for services rendered.

The success of football in CONCACAF countries is measured by the size of the stadium (Bahamas which facilitated the sting operation) or where the FIFA Congress is held, and who is a bigger friend of Sepp Blatter, not by the quality of our players, the organisation of our teams and a visible move up the ladder of world football. The Football Federation in Trinidad and Tobago is always broke but the CONCACAF President can dish out money he has earned from football to subsidise the Federation.

A government minister hosts Bin Hammam and CFU officials, and his (son's) travel agency earns the single biggest chunk of the money spent by the Qatari. This is what people read in their newspapers. The issue is not what the legal opinion said one year ago. The issue must involve foresight and create situations that will minimise these scandals. When the Prime Minister accepted a legal opinion and agreed Jack could continue as a FIFA vice president she should have expected something like this. I am a casual observer and I knew something would crop up to embarass this country, so how did this bunch of the brightest people in the land not know.

Prime Minister Kamla should know what truth there was in the statement made by former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday that Jack owes the UNC $5 million US, implying it was a donation from a slush fund. Will we ever know if it is the same slush fund from which Blatter made the donations to CONCACAF members?

There is clearly more to be exposed in the coming months, but while we continue to close our eyes to the real issues, the problems will mount... and the legal opinions we use to defend our every foolish move will serve us no good.