Irene in New York... All rain. No pain!

Since my Birthday...

Since my birthday in April, I have only made posts on my blog a couple of times. Once to show a video interview of me on the way into FIFA for the meeting of the Executive Committee in May following the initial suspensions of the Warner/Bin Hammam case brought by me to the Ethics Committee; and the other set of videos coming from the CONCACAF website dealing with the magic of this year's Gold Cup competition.

I considered both of those very important and broke my self imposed silence on the blog to see that I memorialized those two watershed events.

Once the issue of the Elections and the Trinidad meeting became news, my blog became the source of pictures of a lifestyle that many bloggers found objectionable. I was proud to know and happy to share those moments with you the readers of this blog. Instead, others used them to poke fun at me and my family and the pictures gave them a wealth of material to draw whatever fanciful conclusions they wished to make about many of the people found on these pages.

As a consequence, at least during the period from when the cases were initiated on May 29th, I chose to avoid doing my normal writing and posting of pictures to allow the legal process the greatest latitude of working independently of any influence or noise from me. I had done my part. The Ethics Code required me in Article 14.1 as follows: Officials shall report any evidence of violations of conduct to the FIFA Secretary General, who shall report it to the competent body.

The cases brought on May 29th are closed. No longer am I inhibited by those open issues. There are new issues on the table daily and new things that I am learning. CONCACAF has been inhibited in expressing its position due to the action taken in the Bahamas Court by Lisle Austin and therefore has not been able to respond to many of the issues which are being faced by the organization.

I expect, in my role as a member of FIFA's Executive Committee, I will be able to continue to express myself on important topics which face our region and plan to do so over the coming days and weeks. I look forward to filling the vacuum with real information.