AUSTIN ‘Jack’ Warner, who on Monday felt compelled to quit as Trinidad and Tobago’s minister of national security, following scathing findings of a CONCACAF-authorised probe, seems to be the kind of politician one could either easily admire or strongly dislike.

His name is virtually synonymous with management of regional/international football and there are those who consider him to be an enigma in a riddle.

As a primary architect — with money and hard work – the flamboyant Warner had help to make a reality in May 2010 the People’s Partnership Government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. He rapidly emerged as the prime minister’s most high-profile and controversial Cabinet minister, even before next month’s mid-term period.

Always ready to passionately dismiss political and media critics, his own arrogance came to rob him of the capacity to make a distinction between objective reporting and claimed media abuses — even if rantings of his political opponents could be ignored or rationalised.

As subsequent developments were to establish, and with recurring investigative journalism, encouraged by the Trinidad Expresss — in particular the contributions from the head of the Investigative Desk, Camini Marajh — Warner’s failure to separate himself from CONCACAF and FIFA, while serving as a high-profile and influential Cabinet minister, came to haunt him.

Above all, has now has come the stunning revelations in a report submitted by the head of CONCACAF’s Integrity Committee, Sir David Simmons, and his colleague, Ricardo Urbina, a former United States senator and judge, at a meeting in Panama last week.

The report is laced with very disturbing allegations against both Warner and his long-time associate, the American former general secretary of CONCACAF Chuck Blazer.

Mr Urbina is not known to this correspondent, but I am familiar with Sir David Simmons, who has quite a stout reputation as a former minister of home affairs and attorney general of Barbados and, subsequently, the country’s chief justice.

The report to CONCACAF, a copy of which was obtained by this correspondent, was hastily dismissed by Warner as “baseless and malicious”, following its presentation at the Panama meeting.

But a few days later, after she had also read it, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar was to separately receive two resignations from Warner — first as minister of national security, the other as chairman of the UNC, the party she leads and which is the dominant partner of her coalition Government.

The prime minister chose to make clear that while accepting Warner’s resignation, “after careful scrutiny of all the facts”, and also that of his position as UNC chairman, he remains a member of parliament for Chaguanas West, a position “I cannot take from him”.

Warner is expected to be in his usual fighting mood to defend himself when the Parliament meets on Friday to debate an outstanding no-confidence motion against him tabled by Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley of the People’s National Movement.

In contrast to the strident criticisms levelled against him since the disclosure of the CONCACAF report, there has come a significant response to the resignation of Warner as minister from the acting police commissioner, Stephen Williams.

Praising Warner for “changing the culture of the police service” during his 10 months he served as minister of national security, Commissioner Williams said that he was “an exceptional minister” by his work ethic to get things done.

Of course, among MPs and Cabinet ministers of the Congress of People wing of Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s coalition Government, there are those who would be quietly, if not openly happy to see the back of ‘Jack’.

Friday’s vote on Rowley’s no-confidence motion should, therefore, provide a good guide on what to expect about the future of Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s Administration.

However, to judge from the current political status in the 41-member Parliament, where the UNC has dominant control, it is doubtful that the embarrassment for government and country, resulting from the CONCACAF report, holds any real danger for survival of the UNC-led Administration.