JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, June 30, 2025

Sorting out this civil society business

by

20160323

The re­cent near-miss in­volv­ing gym­nast The­ma Williams and the Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion ought to have drawn greater at­ten­tion to im­por­tant gov­er­nance is­sues re­lat­ed to the work of rep­re­sen­ta­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions even in fields out­side of sport–al­most all mea­sur­able to the ex­tent of their dys­func­tion­al­i­ty.

I think we should use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­duct an ex­am­i­na­tion of the state not on­ly of our rep­re­sen­ta­tive sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions but oth­er civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions as well. Politi­cians are known to blow hot and cold while or­gan­i­sa­tions crav­ing their in­de­pen­dence as­sert an in­alien­able right to rep­re­sent the in­ter­ests that have anoint­ed them.

Mind you, sports or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­ate on a well-es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­col of safe­ty from the ex­er­cise of gov­ern­ment in­flu­ence, even as there is a nat­ur­al re­liance on state fi­nan­cial sup­port. They serve as vir­tu­al na­tion­al fran­chis­es of in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies and there­fore right­ful­ly as­sert both their pol­i­cy-mak­ing and op­er­a­tional in­de­pen­dence from the state so as to os­ten­si­bly avoid need­less com­min­gling of po­lit­i­cal and sport­ing in­ter­ests. That is fine.

But, in ex­change for this, there is an im­plic­it ex­pec­ta­tion on the part of the pop­u­la­tion on whose be­half these out­fits op­er­ate and whose flag they fly, that there should be high lev­els of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. This is es­pe­cial­ly so since de­spite their in­sis­tence on un­fet­tered in­de­pen­dence, di­rect state fi­nan­cial in­fu­sions and pop­u­lar sup­port form the back­bone of most of their op­er­a­tions.

The West In­dies Crick­et Board es­pe­cial­ly comes to mind. But I be­lieve they need spe­cial­ly-de­vot­ed col­umn space.

It is like play­ing fi­nan­cial mas' but re­sist­ing the threat of the pow­der of ac­count­abil­i­ty. Al­most with­out fail, our na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions are peren­ni­al­ly cap-in-hand, skin­ning teeth be­fore the Min­is­ter of Sport. In the process, op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en the process of fi­nan­cial self-re­liance are fre­quent­ly fore­gone.

What en­sues is a well-known cy­cle of love and hate in­volv­ing hun­gry or­gan­i­sa­tions and rul­ing ad­min­is­tra­tions in­tent on ex­tract­ing what they con­sid­er to be their fair share of po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal.

There are par­tic­u­lar­ly spec­tac­u­lar ex­am­ples in sports oth­er than gym­nas­tics, but we can avoid the sor­did de­tails on this page at this time.

It is not quite the same in oth­er ar­eas, but we can look at all of them as parts of a wider, sin­gle pack­age.

I re­mem­ber well the politi­cian who rose to promi­nence on ac­count of his own spe­cial-in­ter­est ad­vo­ca­cy on a par­tic­u­lar re­cur­rent pub­lic is­sue. It did not take him long up­on achiev­ing high of­fice to throw the ques­tion in my face, in the midst of some press free­dom ad­vo­ca­cy I was lead­ing: "Who vot­ed for you (to chal­lenge us)?" There were, of course, no ben­e­fits to with­draw, so we even­tu­al­ly won.

It is an ac­cept­ed as­ser­tion that prospects for the sur­vival of any de­vel­op­ing na­tion can be de­ter­mined by the strength of the in­ter­ven­tions of its civ­il so­ci­ety in­sti­tu­tions.

The same goes for the full spec­trum of so-called "non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions" that form long lines for largesse while in re­cess from bat­tles against a state in­fra­struc­ture of­ten op­er­at­ing more as an ob­sta­cle than a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of re­quired progress in the re­spec­tive ar­eas.

We have wit­nessed, for ex­am­ple, the wild-eyed fren­zy that fol­lowed de­vel­op­ment of a state reg­istry com­pris­ing artists, cul­tur­al work­ers and their groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions. It is a queue no self-re­spect­ing artist should glee­ful­ly join ex­cept for the cyn­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty to get a piece of the ac­tion. Easy pick­ings. Sign up and start col­lect­ing.

The car­rot swing­ing wild­ly be­fore our eyes is as pa­tro­n­is­ing as it is dan­ger­ous in the con­text of set­ting the pa­ra­me­ters for free ex­pres­sion. So, some­body or bod­ies will­ing­ly agreed that the Gov­ern­ment should "reg­is­ter" our cre­ative folk so that they and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive or­gan­i­sa­tions can be­come "more at­trac­tive to spon­sors and pro­mot­ers"?

There is al­so the "ben­e­fit" of "state recog­ni­tion as an artist" and "in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­tifi­cates."

Now, be­fore any­one dies laugh­ing, let me state that I am aware of the ef­fort to "cer­ti­fy" peo­ple un­der the ban­ner of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the free move­ment of peo­ple through­out the re­gion, since I have led the ef­fort over the years to re­sist a sim­i­lar regime for me­dia work­ers. But this is hard­ly an "in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-recog­nised cer­tifi­cate" that will help any­one sell any­thing. Peo­ple will pay for good art and re­ject poor art.

I am still search­ing for the "cer­tifi­cate" Jack­ie Hink­son hangs near his paint­ings or that David Rud­der waves be­fore com­ing on stage. Who from the halls of pow­er would have paid to pub­lish Wal­cott's Omeros? Would he have need­ed to "reg­is­ter" first?

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, un­der no cir­cum­stances should any gov­ern­ment take on­to it­self the pre­rog­a­tive of iden­ti­fy­ing who is or is not an artist. This is just one step away from the im­po­si­tion of a state cen­sor to vet scripts, re­view art and mu­rals be­fore they be­come ac­cept­able for pub­lic con­sump­tion. More than once, over the years, politi­cians re­spon­si­ble for dol­ing out the loot to en­ter­tain­ers have in­deed cracked or threat­ened to crack the fi­nan­cial whip.

But it's not on­ly a mat­ter of mon­ey and artists. A split labour move­ment, to cite an­oth­er ex­am­ple, has pre­sent­ed glob­al tri­par­tite plat­forms with the se­ri­ous chal­lenge of recog­ni­tion–a mat­ter cur­rent­ly, and iron­i­cal­ly, left in the hands of one of the three par­ties, name­ly the state. The call for "labour uni­ty" thus has mean­ing be­yond trite ref­er­ences to it on Labour Day.

This whole civ­il so­ci­ety busi­ness needs some sort­ing out. If your sur­vival re­lies al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on state sub­ven­tions, you are not a "non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion" in the sense that you can re­li­ably be ex­pect­ed to be your own per­son, de­vel­op­ing your own in­de­pen­dent pro­grammes to bring about pos­i­tive change.

There al­so need to be con­cert­ed in­sti­tu­tion-build­ing ef­forts that help wean many civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions away from per­sis­tent re­liance on the state for sur­vival. On­ly so can civic-mind­ed peo­ple and their or­gan­i­sa­tions tru­ly as­sert their in­de­pen­dence.

Eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties have the po­ten­tial to ac­cel­er­ate such a process, even though it would be left to be seen who comes first, sec­ond and third in the fir­ing line.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored