“Sometimes I get the impression that if I were to live my life again I wouldn’t be here,” was the grim pronouncement by Jack Warner as he sat in his Concacaf office on Edward Street, Port-of-Spain, last week Friday.
It was 11:15 am and Warner, 63-years-old on January 26, had just concluded an interview with the Business Guardian.
Dressed in a dark green suit, white shirt and rose-printed tie, Warner’s tailored outward appearance seemed to belie his inner turmoil.
The face of the man who changed the landscape of local and regional football seemed defeated.
Vindication in proving T&T’s worthiness to play football on a world stage, 16 years after it lost 0-1 to the US, should have been edifying for him. But it isn’t. Not these days.
Mere weeks after the country qualified along with 31 others to play in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the Warner family-owned travel agency Simpaul is in the middle of a conflict of interest controversy surrounding the sale of World Cup tickets.
This is being advertised as part of a tour package to Germany (minus air fare) at a cost of $30,000.
A former history teacher at Polytechnic, Warner is well aware the ticket issue reminds some of his decision to sell 16,500 extra tickets for the T&T versus US game in November 1989, which led to the stadium being overcrowded and, it is said, peoples’ lives being endangered.
Sixteen years ago, Warner said he could not walk the streets of Trinidad without being abused and his own people were the most brutal.
He shakes his head and pauses. Then, he lifts his shoulders, raises his hands and once again, pauses.
His movements are indecisive, the frustration and fatigue of a week spent in the public eye visibly beginning to take its toll.
“I am so tired of the mediocrity. You reach so far and people try to pull you down every step you take. You think I am doing this for Jack Warner? I am doing this for the country which I love. Something even Patrick Manning had to admit ‘brought people together like no politician had hitherto been able to do,’” he states.
He stops.
“I’m cool, I’m cool,” he said, as if to banish his growing anger, motioning with his hand to continue the line of questioning.
The momentary feeling of self-defeat seems to ebb and he is once again a man with a mission.
The legacy he will leave behind is hung on the wall over his left shoulder.
A German flag.
He wants to be known as the man who took T&T to the World Cup.
It was given as a gift following the Warriors victory in Bahrain last November.
It’s enough to renew his spirits. But only just.
Last week Tuesday, he called a press conference at the Crowne Plaza to “defend my good name and that of my family against the mischief and character assassination” he claimed were contained in a series of articles which were published by the Express newspaper.
Then, he declared that the T&T Football Federation did not want any funds from the Government for the World Cup project.
Twenty-four hours later he changed his mind and joined Sport Minister Roger Boynes at a press conference.
Why the change?
He likened himself to a good general. And like a general in war, he knows when he should withdraw and when he should forge ahead.
“For life, I’ve been a historian. I’ve read of Bismarck, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon believed that he could fight everyone at the same time... it worked for a while, but in the end defeat was inevitable. Bismarck was far wiser than Napoleon. Bismarck understood how to formulate a long-term strategy whereas Napoleon could only think in the short-term.
“When you understand history, you understand leaders. Even Ariel Sharon, who is dying, has changed his whole philosophy and strategy. So, he’s a bad man for that? Because he realise?” he asks.
According to Warner, a man has to accept when he is wrong and when he can make a difference.
Last week was a case in point.
“The week has not phased me in any way,” he said and pointed out that he managed to stick to his daily routine of getting up at 4 am and working till midnight even in the midst of controversy swirling around his ownership of Simpaul.
“It’s the same routine I practice wherever I am. Because when its 4 o’clock here, its 10 am in Zurich where I have an office and the president of FIFA to talk to. So if I wait until 10 am it will be late so I mightn’t be able to catch them. And then I have an office in Guatemala, which is two hours behind and I have an office in New York which is an hour behind.”
Warner wears several hats—he’s Fifa vice president, Concacaf president, special adviser to the TTFF, deputy political leader of the UNC and a businessman in his own right.
How does he manage to balance these hats?
“Do I balance them? What I try to do, I try to do well. I am a perfectionist. I know that there is no substitute for hard work. But people in this country hate hard work, they like to take short-cuts. They like to get money for as little work as possible.
“Sometimes when I come here, I get a sense of frustration almost desperation because I feel like an alien and when I go to New York it is different. Zurich is different. I go to Guatemala City, which is supposed to be behind us, and it is different.
“Here anything goes and therefore I tell you in this context I have to work extra hard and the hours I would spend doing things here are more than anywhere else,” he says.
His spare time is usually spent reading biographies and watching Westerns or cartoons.
“With a cartoon, you can get up go to the fridge and take a beer and come back and the same thing is going on. You don’t have to think deeply but if you go to other movies like crime you have to focus and you can’t move. I have more DVD cartoons and Westerns than anyone in Trinidad,” he boasts.
Jack’s childhood
The hard work, long hours and perfection-driven life is ingrained from his recollection of his childhood poverty.
“Anything I have achieved in my life has been the basis of hard work. Nobody has given me anything. I have not inherited anything,” he declares.
When he was six-years-old, he remembered having to walk six miles from his family’s home in Rio Claro to St Theresa’s RC school, the only school at the time in Rio Claro.
Then, one of a four children, he had only one pair of washekongs which, “when it had hole you had to put cardboard to cover it up and when rain fall your socks would get wet.”
“I would carry a bottle of tea in a bag with bake and smoke herring and sometimes in the evening when I come home, if the bottle isn’t washed clean and you put tea the following day, the tea turned.
“For four years, I used to have one pants and two shirts to go to school and my mother would wash the pants and shirt on a Wednesday and put it on the back of the fridge to dry.
“So Thursday I looked very clean and the guys couldn’t understand it. And one day they put ink on the seat. I didn’t know and sat down on the ink and the ink stained my pants and couldn’t come out. And then they knew I had one pair of pants. They used to call me ‘one pants.’”
Today, Warner says he gives about $100,000 in charity every month.
He pulls out his air miles card, five million air miles, and says he gives free tickets to people who have to travel abroad for medical reasons.
He peers over the rim of his glasses, his hands in a suspended motion in the air.
“I’m telling you this because I worked hard,” he continues.
“What pisses me off is when guys come and try to trivialise my hard work and get some other reason for my achievements. But even then I know this is a country, which thrives, that cherishes failure and mediocrity. This country does not encourage success, particularly black success because if you black and successful you in coke. It is against that background, I have to survive,” he says.
Jack and business
How does a teacher become a multi-millionaire and be able to give away, by his reckoning, over $1 million a year?
“Assuming the presidency of Concacaf gave Warner a budget to work with and his friendship with then FIFA president, Dr Joao Havelange, gave the option to lucrative television contracts.
“He was able to negotiate TV rights and this kick-started his business career. Football became the business in which he invested time, money and resources,” said Valentino Singh, Guardian sports editor and author of Upwards Through the Night, The Biography of Jack Warner.
Warner said it took acumen, knowledge and capitalising on the right opportunity to make it a success.
In Warner’s case, the formation of the Warner Group of Companies took place over a period of several years.
At last week Tuesday’s press conference, he said, “I make no apologies for the business interests of the Warner Group of companies. It is not a crime to be successful even for people like me, but no one should attempt to impute improper business practices and conflicts of interest to me when the reality has been that I have given selflessly to the cause of football and the aspiration of the nation’s interest in this area.”
Warner’s business interests include Simpaul’s, a security firm, Emerald Plaza Hotel & Apartments and D’ Coal Pot restaurant.
And by his own admission, all have benefited from his association with the TTFF.
“Over the years, I have paid up a significant part of the TTFF debt with the exception of $827,000 which is owed to Simpaul Travel, since 2001. In fact, many of the arrangements made with companies such as Simpaul’s, with which I have an interest, have been to the benefit of the TTFF and to my own disfavour because of non-payment by the TTFF,” he said.
“The records show that the earnings of these organisations (Emerald Plaza and D’ Coal Pot) have suffered because of the subsidised rates which I insist they charge for the services provided and for which the TTFF has not been paying,” he added.
The TTFF owes these two entities well over half a million dollars, he states.
But then Warner became defensive.
“Let me ask you something. Why is it you guys do not make comparisons? Why are you guys discriminating? And its only Jack Warner,” he said, referring to two businessmen closely associated with the ruling party who, Warner said, have benefited from their association.
“At the end of the day, I have more claim to fame because I sustain that organisation, I have mortgaged my house for them and why therefore is it Jack Warner and nobody else?” he asked.
“The tickets are owned by Simpaul, my family, so what? The tickets that Simpaul is selling are tickets which they bought from a European tour operator and you don’t have to buy it. You don’t have to buy it,” he stressed.
“But it is my right as a businessman to buy tickets in Europe, make a tour package for 12 days in a hotel, ground transport and sell it. One more time. You don’t have to buy it,” he said.
“I have not sold a ticket from TTFF, none have arrived yet, they applied for it only yesterday (last Thursday) and they may get it next week but if they don’t get any, my tours still selling. What is the problem? What have I done?” he said.