How dare you!
By: Sean Williams (Jamaica Observer).
...Warner banishes Burrell's CONCACAF challenger
NASSAU, Bahamas - Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and CONCACAF boss, Austin 'Jack' Warner, has ordered that St Kitts and Nevis' Peter Jenkins be banished "from all commissions of both organisations" and into the football wilderness.
Warner, in a widely circulated letter to the Kittian, said he has instructed the general secretaries of both football organisations to expel Jenkins, who is deemed to have attempted to disunite the Caribbean football family in his failed quest to unseat Jamaica's Captain Horace Burrell as the regional representative of the CONCACAF Executive Committee.
"In your (Jenkins') case, on the advice of the committee of the CFU, I have instructed the general secretary of both the CFU and the CONCACAF to remove you forthwith," said Warner's frank letter to the former president of the St Kitts and Nevis Football Federation.
Jenkins, who staged the challenge to Burrell with only the "support of two Caribbean members" in Grenada and Antigua/Barbuda, used as his campaign rhetoric that the CFU is split into "small countries and big countries" and this position earned the ire of Warner and the "remainder of the Caribbean football family".
Also, his unilateral position to mount the challenge to the Jamaica Football Federation president was said to have contravened "the political conventions" of the CFU.
Jenkins' challenge of a fellow member of the CFU for office was said to have gone against tradition of an organisation unified in purpose and mission.
At a CFU meeting here on Sunday, Warner urged the CFU membership "not to support" Jenkins. "I was very critical of the fact that Caribbean football is split over a candidate, which is unprecedented, and this is what we have fought against over the years," said Warner, who is also vice-president of FIFA.
Also, the two nations - Grenada and Antigua/Barbuda - that initially backed Jenkins' bid will be written to by the CFU hierarchy to decide the course of action for them in their role "in attempting to fracture the unity" of the union.
"I do wish to advise you (Jenkins) that, at the meeting of the Caribbean countries on Sunday, May 31, 2009, it was decided that the Antigua/Barbuda and Grenada (two members who were absent at the said meeting) should be written to and be asked to submit reasons why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for their attempts to destabilise Caribbean football and Caribbean solidarity within the CFU," Warner noted in his letter to Jenkins.
"If their explanations are not satisfactory, disciplinary proceedings shall be instituted against both countries," the correspondence continued.
Jenkins, citing that there was no support to stand among the members of North and Central America and the Caribbean, withdrew his candidacy a day prior to the June 1 CONCACAF Congress at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas where the 59th FIFA Congress was held.
Warner also chided Jenkins for the reasons given for his withdrawal. "It was therefore very disingenuous of you to try and implicate the St Kitts/Nevis delegation as one of the reasons for your withdrawal, the reasons for so doing best known to you," said the Trinidadian, a servant of football at all levels.
If Jenkins' candidacy had to gone to a vote, it is said that he would have been decimated 2-37 by the one-sided support for Burrell, who was returned for another four-year term on the eight-man CONCACAF Executive Committee.
