Letter to the Sports Editor…THE GFF NEEDS AN INDEPENDENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jul 02, 2015 Sports

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Dear Sports Editor,
Imagine this! Your club is classified on paper as a nonprofit but you are not subject to the scrutiny and financial reporting requirements of nonprofits. Your club – the nonprofit – netted USD $2 billion in profits from its recently-held international fundraiser and you paid 36 of your club managers USD $1 million each from these proceeds. Your club – the nonprofit – has over USD $1.4 billion in cash reserves which is equivalent to the annual GDP of Grenada and Dominica combined but you are exempt from paying taxes; in fact, your club – the nonprofit- forces countries hosting your fundraiser to change their taxation laws for the event so you can keep ALL your profits. Finally, your club – the nonprofit – does all of the above without independent oversight i.e. There is no independent board of directors  to ensure duties of care, loyalty and obedience are carried out consistently by the club’s managers and employees. Now, that’s a pretty cool arrangement right? Some of my street-savvy friends would call it “a very nice hustle”!
Our GFF (Guyana Football Federation) is actually a member of this distinguished club also known as FIFA. Our GFF, one of 209 members of this elite club, has voting powers equal to that of the US, Germany or Spain; and each of these members received a minimum of USD $1.3 million from FIFA in 2015. (Note: it is not clear how much the GFF/NC has received in total from FIFA since the lessons of full fiscal transparency are apparently yet to learned and exhibited by this transitional group charged by FIFA with normalizing the affairs of our erstwhile dysfunctional GFF.)
Not bad for a nation of 800,000 that has never qualified for a World Cup finals. Not bad for a federation that was in such shambles in 2014 that FIFA disbanded its Executive Committee and installed a Normalisation Committee (NC) of 5 volunteers with extensive management expertise but very little football knowledge. The NC’s mandate from FIFA is to right the sinking GFF ship by, among other things, revising and ratifying the GFF constitution. To the NC’s credit, they have done a decent job thus far, fulfilling this mandate, given the circumstances and their all-volunteer status. So let’s cut them some slack but not too much.
The GFF/NC has a comprehensive vision and long term plan for football development in Guyana. A team of experienced coaches and a technical director (TD) were hired to execute this vision and plan. After a lengthy hiatus, our Golden Jaguars senior and u-23 teams, and our Lady Jags are playing again in major tournaments. A new Elite League comprising 8 of the top football clubs in Guyana is scheduled to kick-off in August, 2015. Finally, an Extraordinary Congress was recently held with the Member Associations (MAs) and the new constitution was ratified by unanimous vote. The 22 MAs are now required to revise, ratify and submit their respective constitutions to reflect the changes in the national GFF constitution. Subsequently, the MAs via Congress; will elect a new Executive Committee to administer the affairs of football in Guyana. The NC’s mandate would then be fulfilled and the transitional group would be formally disbanded.
But what assurances do we really have that the blunders and corrupt practices of the past won’t be repeated in the future? Do we fully understand these blunders and corrupt practices? In all likelihood, we the public, probably never will.
The new 2015 GFF constitution, while an improvement over the previous one (2010), falls short, in my opinion, in its failure to institute an independent board of directors to provide oversight and ensure the affairs of the GFF are managed effectively and in the best interest of all stakeholders – players, clubs, sub-associations, sponsors, coaches, referees, administrators and fans of Guyanese football.
As is, the new GFF, like FIFA, will continue to rely on its own internal systems of checks and balances for oversight. We all know how that story ended for the old GFF and how it’s currently unfolding for FIFA.
In closing, the GFF should follow the lead of its CONCACAF affiliates – the US Soccer Federation (USSF), the Jamaican Football Federation (JFF) and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) – and add a functioning independent board of directors to its organizational chart.
Otherwise, there will most likely be a return to the status quo and that is simply not good enough for the aforementioned stakeholders and die-hard supporters of Guyanese football at home and abroad.
By James Paul – MBA
Small Business Consultant
Published Author of Behcets In Black

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