We have known him as tough-talking, many times tactless and politically incorrect, speaking impulsively, thinking later — but some of his friends defend this behaviour as just his public façade.

Instead, they prefer to describe Jack Warner as "really a loveable person" when he is unplugged.

Jack is clearly unlike the rest, a politician about whom there is always the word "but" — a person with distinct polarising sides.

There is an identifiable roughness, an abrasive ministerial style; he manages with a hammer — but he is seen as equally approachable, caring, and genuinely comforting to the needy.

Since his appointment as Minister of National Security there are little signs of that double-sidedness in Jack's personality, as those contrasting sides seem to have "co-mingled" (the word used by the International Court of Arbitration for Sport to describe the funds in his secret bank account) and all that is on show now is the ugly side of Jack Warner.

There are no longer any attempts at suave politeness or the caring, loveable, good-fellow side of the Prime Minister's "man of action".

What is emerging is amorphous, Machiavellian maybe, but it is morphing with full, roaring aggression, using Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs as target practice.

There was an early warning that this was coming. But we were assured by four legal luminaries, including the late Sir Ellis Clarke, that it would be good for Trinbago to have Warner serve in FIFA and as a Government minister.

The allegations, the Prime Minister assured us, were "just allegations".

Large and in charge, he held the infamous Hyatt meeting. Then Warner, suspended and facing an inquiry, chose to resign in ignominy from FIFA.

Yet he continued to snipe at FIFA, alerting us of an impending tsunami which we believed would have engulfed FIFA, but fast forward to the destruction of the Re-Route Movement camp, when he warned us that we "ain't see nothing yet".

By now we should realise that Warner's tsunami has the potential to engulf us all. First, dissect his pronouncements since his appointment; below the promises of immediate delivery there is nothing strategic.

There is no science of policing, just self-promoting tactics and photo ops, all staged to beat up or bully public officials to create an image of Warner as the hero of the system.

Some say start with local football; then we will realise that Warner elevated it to international recognition. Now it is in a waste land, wrecked and abandoned.

"The country is facing a moment of truth," former Information Minister Suruj Rambachan told us some time ago, yet in the face of the damning report of the Court of Arbitration against Warner the PM and her Cabinet stand by him as their man to fight crime.

Some time ago I wrote of British politician RAB Butler. While serving as home affairs minister, Butler was tipped to be the next prime minister, but Scotland Yard began an investigation into a company with which he was associated years before.

Butler immediately resigned, stating there must not even "be a hint of suspicion" that he would influence the police. That was the end of his career.

In Trinbago, the PM appoints Warner, making the defence that the charges laid at his door are "just allegations". Further, he is placed in charge of the police, and is so empowered now that he threatens Commissioner Gibbs — with the obvious support of the Police Service Commission and the mutinous Police Social and Welfare Association — that "who doh hear, go feel".

The PM stills says she backs him, and Cabinet colleagues circle in support after the international court describes Warner, Trinbago's National Security Minister, as "an unreliable witness", who "appears to be prone to an economy with the truth" and at the Hyatt meeting "may not have complied with the highest ethical standards".

This is the person that the PM allows to by-pass the Chief Personnel Officer to negotiate, personally, salary increases and retirement age issues with the Police Association and the Defence Force.

This is the person who in a vaps invites the American government to patrol our territorial waters.This is the person who plans to bring back the notorious Flying Squad and who arbitrarily decides to talk about closing two prisons and transferring the inmates to central Trinidad.

Every change — including tyranny — starts with one step. Weeks ago, I suggested that we should look at Germany in the 1930s; someone, obviously unfamiliar with that experience, replied that I was being melodramatic.

But Germany, caught in a crisis, allowed small excesses; the world remembers how that ended.

I agree we are at a moment of truth. So where are the voices? Where is Arthur NR Robinson? Where are the Senior Counsel who okayed Jack as a Minister? Where is the Bar Association? Where is Karl Hudson-Phillips? Where are our religious leaders?

This week African people celebrate Emancipation. Should we? Also, Trinbago "Goes for Gold" in the Olympics, but there are fears that success may be tarnished there too.

* Keith Subero, a former

Express news editor, has

since followed a career in

communication and

management.