Wes­ley Gib­bings

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.