The commercial bank and Berbice cricket: Frightening connection

Mar 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – What is the connection between the unionisation of the employees of Republic Bank and an interesting misdirection in cricket administration in Berbice? The link is dangerous, unsettling and not in the interest of Guyana’s future.
Sadly, no one picked it up in Guyana. This of course is not surprising. We no longer have an intellectual culture. We do not have academics at UG that understand there is a distinct role in life for academics as vastly different from the brain surgeon, the civil servant, the lawyer, the accountant, engineer, army officer, etc.
An academic has a moral duty to society to explain crises, disasters, problems, complexities, etc. They may not have all the right answers but their interventions generate a culture of debate which can lead to the debate on culture, which can lead to opening up all kinds of vistas. Society is intellectually stronger.
This country went through a caricature from March 3 to the last day in July in 2021 and only one UG lecturer offered his two cents in public – Sherwood Lowe. And guess what? You may get a heart attack when you find out that the gentleman was not a social scientist but an engineer. So where were the social scientists?
The world, yes the global humanity laughed at Guyana when the ruling party asked seven judges of the prestigious Caribbean Court of Justice to declare that a majority of the 65-member parliament was 34 and not 33. One thing must have gone through the heads of all humans anywhere in the world when they read what was going on.
They had to ask themselves if in cricket, football and basketball, you can win the game by one point/run/goal. Only one UG social scientist publicly scorned the 34 thesis – Dr. Thomas Singh even though the then head of Transparency International – Guyana Inc., was working in the Department of Mathematics at the time.
The incidents at Republic Bank and in the administration of Berbice cricket were highlighted in the press but they just died a natural death. The bank, after the employees made their choice, has accepted unionisation. The focus should be on the employees and how sensible they are.
Before the union was given acceptance by the employees (the bank is currently disputing the recognition), the employees should have asked union executives if the union has term limits. If it does not, then they should reject it. There is a current caricature in trade unionism in Guyana, where permanence of tenure has become a fixture.
In two trade union outfits, the head has gone past 35 years and 30 years respectively. In several other trade unions, the heads have chalked up more than 20 years in office. In fact, the Public Service Union (PSU) once had term-limits but it was removed by those who wanted the permanence of power.
In this country, Guyana, which has one of the youngest populations in the world, the experience of administration must be shared. I mean absolutely nothing personal when I write that the head of the Guyana Olympics Association has been there for almost 35 years. Half of the country was born when he and the current head of the PSU took up their respective headships.
Over in Berbice, philosophical thinking went out of the window in cricket. The administrators of cricket in Berbice have been involved in litigation for over decades so some form of rational thinking may have been lost. The Berbice cricket administrators recently rejected a motion to have its head serve only three consecutive terms of two years. Instead, they went for five consecutive terms.
Obviously, this means that a CEO can be in power for 10 straight years. Why in a young country like this does anyone want their administrator of cricket, football, hockey, tennis, race-horse, etc., to hold office for 10 years? Why not four or five? Why 10? Why not share the experience so after four years, another young person gets a taste of what it is like to administer an important national association?
Why term limits are important in Guyana is simply because of our demographics. I will repeat a general point about term limits that I stated on this page before. Here is another example of that point. If Sunil and Masood are both at 40 and they both contest the leader-position of their organisation and Sunil wins and spends the next 35 years at the helm, Masood gets his chance when he becomes 75. When Sunil retires and Massod gets his 35 years, he will be 110 years when he retires. This country has severe philosophical limitations.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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