Just how many brown envelopes has Jack Warner managed to spirit away over the years? Perhaps his greatest trick has been to evaporate from world footballing positions with a ‘presumption of innocence’. It is strange now to have Warner cast as the outsider who has had his residency within the coddling grasp of FIFA’s fiefdom revoked. Your memory doesn’t need to be that solid to remember the valiant way he defended FIFA’s honour in the recent Panorama exposé, refusing to engage with reporters and poo-pooing any notion that FIFA was rotten to the core.
No, he stands stripped, but presumably very wealthy, bleating about hypocrisy, injustice, when even his suspension and eventual resignation serve only to highlight the corruption of the money laundering cartel that masquerades under the pseudonym of FIFA. Would any of the PMs fiddling their expenses have been allowed to resign and so avoid punishment? Can a ‘presumption of innocence’ be issued indefinitely? Surely if there is evidence that one is indeed guilty, being presumed innocent is only in effect while under trial. After trail you are definitively either innocent or guilty. It is yet further proof that FIFA are keen to wriggle free from suspicion, to distract people with this sacrifice and avoid dredging through the murky dealings which have lead to Russia and Qatar sealing the next two world cups and China effectively calling dibs on the next available slot.
A law unto themselves, it is hard to see how things will ever change.
~ Ed
No comments:
Post a Comment