THE Guyana CRICKET BOARD IS IN THE RIGHT

Jan 07, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Imagine that you are living in your house. You own the building and everything inside; it is your property.
One day you turn up at your home to find the locks on your doors changed by a trespasser. It is your house, not his. He has no place there but he has placed locks on your doors and in so doing prohibits you from gaining entry.
Then he announces that he wants to talk to you. He locks you out of your own house then has the gall to say that he wants to sit down and talk to you. Why would you be in any mood to talk to him?
What is there to talk about? He has no right to place any locks on the door, no right at all to do anything to stop you gaining entry to your home yet he wants to sit down and talk to you.
The trespasser says to you that he knows that you have to attend a wedding, so he will allow you to go inside and take out your clothes. This is after he has already summoned a meeting with you to ask you to hand over everything in the house to him.
Now why would you in the first place meet with someone who has unlawfully taken over your home and wants you to hand over everything inside to him? Why would you want to be part of a plan to make your destitute?
And even though you want to go to the wedding, why would you accept that this trespasser has to give you permission to take out the attire you wish to wear to the wedding?
Which self-respecting homeowner is going to put himself in a position where he has to be given approval to enter their own home by a trespasser?
This is the situation that faces the Guyana Cricket Board. They have been locked out of their own offices and are being told that they can have permission to get out the things to allow Guyana to participate in the regional T 20 competition.
Why would the GCB consent to this form of tyranny? Why should they have to be given approval to enter their own offices by a trespasser?
One sports editor has suggested that the excuse being given by the GCB in not fielding a team is lame. He suggested that since the office is on private property, the GCB can simply break the locks that were unlawfully placed on their offices.
But this is exactly what the authorities want. The GCB is not going to fall for this trap because the next thing that is going to happen is that the police are going to be called in and somebody is going to be locked up. That particular sports editor should be reminded about the incident when a member of one of the associate boards of the GCB was arrested as he left a meeting. This was an act of intimidation and intended to send a message to the officials of the Demerara Cricket Board that the GCB would have to confront the power of the State.
And this is not the only example of where the power of the State was used against the GCB. Under the Friendly Society Act, an inquiry was held into the accounts of the GCB and this process delayed for a long time the holding of the AGM of the GCB.
There has been a lot of talk about a lack of accountability by the GCB. But so far not a shred of evidence has been provided to establish this. In fact the books of the GCB have been audited and re-audited. Yet the government refuses to make public the outcome of those audits to establish any financial impropriety. If the government had the evidence, they would have made it public already. The accountability issue is a red herring. There is no lack of accountability and no mismanagement of cricket.
The GCB has also been criticized for indicating that Guyana cannot participate in the T 20. It has been argued that attempts should have been made to get the team to Antigua. The government even said it was willing to pay.
Well why should the GCB play into the hands of the government? Why should they commit suicide? The only weapon that the GCB has against the tyranny of a government take-over is Guyana’s non-participation in regional cricket because of the IMC issue.
That is the only weapon that the GCB has. If they allow the team to go on sponsorship of the government, they would be playing their trump card and they would have nothing to fall back on.
Those behind the IMC now know that unless they call off this plan to impose themselves on local cricket, Guyana will be banned. And this is the only deterrent against a full IMC take-over. So to ask the GCB to leave itself defenseless by sending a team to the T 20 tournament would be tantamount to the GCB shooting itself in the foot.
Another suggestion is that the GCB could have taken the matter of the padlocking of its offices to the court. Unfortunately, the GCB does not have at this stage the option of taking this matter to court as some feel. The courts have ruled that the GCB has no legal personality, that is, they cannot sue or be sued. Therefore what legal action is the GCB going to take?
And there is no support from the opposition parties in Guyana and from other sporting bodies. Everybody is afraid of the big bad wolf, afraid that they will next be in line.
And so the GCB was left with no other option but indicating to the WICB that they cannot participate because they cannot have access to their accounts and offices.  It has done the right thing.

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