GCB and WICB attempts further blackmail

Jun 18, 2014 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter dated June 14, 2014 titled ‘GCB Treasurer corrects President Ramotar’ by one Anand Kalladeen, Director of WICB. Apart from the Director’s strenuous attempt to defend the GCB’s poor performances, he behaves like a true henchman of Cameron’s WICB, where he also attempts to intimidate and belittle the President of Guyana.
While the President is capable of responding for himself, his letter continues the tradition of WICB’s maligning and threatening behavior towards a sitting Head of State. The letter is devoid of similar criticism aimed at the Opposition Leader, Mr. Granger and AFC, most of whose representatives prepared and then supported the Cricket Bill.
Mr. Kalladeen targets the regular whipping boys (the government) on its role in cricket despite ICC’s November 2012 public statement about the significant role of governments in cricket.
He seeks to chastise the President now that the Bill has passed because he recognizes the writing on the wall as regards his tenure as a WICB Director. He tries to profess his innocence and gain sympathy about his qualifications and somehow ‘professional’ work, by lashing out at those who seek to rein in the excesses of the WICB and the GCB.
Additionally, now that Mr. Kalladeen has been fattened from the largesse resulting from his five years Directorship tenure on behalf of the GCB on the WICB board, he seeks to subdue any potential challenge to these benefits.
He is doing so not only for himself but also possibly for his cohorts and business associates. These will all evaporate should a new election be called and his faction loses the executive. It should be noted that the new threat issued by the WICB to dismiss Guyana’s Under 19 Team from the regional tournament is another attempt at blackmailing the government and the people of Guyana.
Any fair-minded group or person who has reviewed the new Bill, would conclude why not just proceed with an open and transparent electoral process, and whoever wins, so be it? If all the books are in order, as the Director claims, then why is he objecting to the rolling out of the Bill? But, individuals such as Mr. Kalladeen are conscious of the many wrongs of the GCB and they may not be favourably considered once again for elections. They could be locked up when the Bill is enacted into law, hence his admonition of the president and others to force them in submission.
Moreover, as a Director of the WICB, how could Mr. Kalladeen self-review or pronounce on the results by declaring them to be free and fair when he is part of both boards and part of the problem! Normally such comments are only made by an individual of an entity when there are questionable marks about the process.
One only has to recall the numerous elections results Forbes Burnham declared to be free and fair during his tenure as President of Guyana during the period 1966 to 1985. Similarly, upon examination of ACCA’s Code of Ethics and Conduct, not just its Fundamental Principles (FP) but the Conceptual Framework which governs the FP, Mr. Kalladeen could be in breach of various categories of threats to the Code, most notably self-interest, self-review, and intimidation.
The WICB Director spends most of the time in his letter ratcheting up claims about the challenges by others to the GCB and its authority. What this gentleman should have spent time explaining are the whereabouts of the assets of the GCB, what are they doing in a private company, why did the GCB refuse to investigate match-fixing claims against another WICB Director in the 2011 National T20 Competition, and where do they get the huge sums of money to pay lawyers to tie up challenges to their authority in Guyana’s courts?
If as Mr. Kalladeen is suggesting his beloved GCB is a “…a vibrant, well organized, structured and accountable sports entity”, then how does this connect with the last placement of Guyana’s National Cricket Teams in the 2014 Regional four-day and one-day Tournaments, and the near bottom-place finishes in the previous years in which the current executive has been in charge?
The same could be said of Guyana’s Under 19 and Under 15 teams over the years. Isn’t there a marked similarity with WICB’s West Indies cricket teams, which now occupy bottom places of the ICC Test and ODI rankings, matching of course their performances in the last five years!
Finally, rather than WICB issue more threats and attempt to blackmail the government of Guyana, what the WICB Director should have spent time elaborating in his letter is how why new Cricket Bill will not affect the CPL matches in Guyana, like it did with the Test match.
Is it that the financial rewards of the CPL are so overriding that WICB will not pull games from Guyana, or that the main sponsors of that tournament come from Guyana?!
Jewan Persaud

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