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Opening of Synthetic Facility false starts
By Edison Jefford
It is now safe to conclude that an analysis that suggested that the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG)
Aubrey Hutson
should have refused the responsibility to be the arbitrary mouth-piece of the Government, on the subject of the opening of the Synthetic Track and Field Facility at Leonora, was absolutely correct.
The Facility has false started, missing a March 27 opening date as the AAG had announced, and just what we had indicated in an article that appeared on February 22, captioned ‘The AAG lacks savoir-faire’, made our analysis not only correct, but also prophetic.
In that critique of an announcement from AAG that the Facility will be opened on March 27, and the association had been given half-hour on the opening programme, this writer had endeavoured to expose the inherent flaws in that disclosure.
“The AAG is the representative organ of all athletes and clubs in Guyana and is an affiliate to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). With that said, the AAG cannot stand as an arbitrary mouth-piece of the existing Government of Guyana,” the article noted in February.
“Such a correspondence should have emanated from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport that has an established mechanism in place to inform the media; the AAG played right into the hand of the Government when it ‘jumped the gun’ with the disclosure,” the article continued.
“If for some reason, and there has been many in the past, the facility does not meet an announced March 27 opening date, Government is in a position to inform that it was the AAG that published the date as opposed to
Frank Anthony
an official release from the ministry,” this writer had observed.
As was the scenario when AAG announced the opening date, of the time of publication of this follow-up, there has been no official release from the ministry, which is directly responsible for the construction of the Facility, on its opening.
Whether it was a serious thought, plan of action or a mere whisper to open the Facility on March 27, AAG President, Aubrey Hutson should have told Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony and longstanding, Director of Sport, Neil Kumar, whom he visited the track with in February, that their ministry should make the announcement.
By allowing the ministry to use its system to inform the media, the AAG would have exonerated itself from what is now an embarrassment for the association. Government has, basically, thrown the AAG under the bus with no public apology or explanation forthcoming.
The Government, whose project the AAG sought to announce, has not kept its side of the bargain to open the Facility as per schedule, according to announcement, thereby embarrassing the AAG and forcing them to, as is colloquially said, ‘put their foot in their mouth’.
There is a very serious lesson in this humiliation for the Athletics Association; one that all major sport organisations practice very well; it has long been an established fact of sport administration that there must be clear separation between sport and politics; the two is much like oil and water; they just do not mix.
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