An­dre E Bap­tiste

Horserac­ing in T&T once again finds it­self at the cross roads through no fault of its own. Two weeks ago, a strike by the jock­eys and grooms was avert­ed by the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) find­ing funds to pay up some of the ar­rears owed to these con­stituents. The ar­rears were the re­sult of the non-re­lease of funds to the ARC by the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB). This, in turn, be­ing the re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment's con­tin­ued fail­ure to ap­point a board. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in­to pow­er in May 2010 on a wave of change. Over the en­su­ing 11 months, the par­ty has through an in­de­ci­sive Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try al­lowed horserac­ing to stum­ble from one faux pas to an­oth­er as far as the BLB's im­por­tant role is con­cerned. The rac­ing com­mu­ni­ty in par­tic­u­lar, finds it­self (not for the first time) down on its knees. If any­one had stat­ed that it would take 11 months to ap­point a board to an en­ti­ty as sim­ple as the Bet­ting Levy Board, few would have be­lieved them.

Even though the Part­ner­ship took in ex­cess of six months to ap­point many, much more crit­i­cal boards to the coun­try's op­er­a­tion, most would have felt that the de­lay in ap­point­ing the BLB was be­cause it was so low in the pri­or­i­ty rank­ing and more fo­cus was be­ing placed on those oth­er boards. Now that most of those oth­er boards are in­stalled-there is no longer a veil over the ab­sence of the BLB. In­stead it would ap­pear that the BLB has fall­en out of favour with every­one con­nect­ed and it may ei­ther be ig­no­rance or ne­glect. Those out­side of the rac­ing in­dus­try, may not know (pri­or to read­ing this ar­ti­cle) of the im­broglio in­volv­ing the ex-pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) and ini­tial­ly des­ig­nat­ed chair­man of the BLB, Ka­ma Ma­haraj.

There have been clear re­ports, not de­nied by ei­ther par­ty to date, that there is a sig­nif­i­cant rift (some call it a chasm) be­tween the new chair­man of the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), Derek Chin, and the pro­posed BLB chair­man which was sup­posed to be Ma­haraj. The ex­tent to which this chasm has de­layed the ap­point­ment of a chair­man and board might nev­er be known but there is some force out there stalling progress on this mat­ter. As it stands, oth­er names have ap­par­ent­ly pushed for­ward in­stead for the chair­man­ship, but these too have been hin­dered by a lack of con­sen­sus on the ap­point­ment. Is this job of such ma­te­ri­al­ly great val­ue af­ter all, be­cause giv­en the cur­rent in­de­ci­sion, this can be the on­ly con­clu­sion.

The very sad sit­u­a­tion is that while the politi­cians dither and the ad­min­is­tra­tors bick­er, the sport suf­fers.

I am sure that when you talk to any of the ad­min­is­tra­tors they will ar­gue that they are on­ly in­ter­est­ed in the best in­ter­est of the sport- does any­one ex­pect them to say oth­er­wise? I am sure that when you talk to any of the politi­cians they will ar­gue that this de­ci­sion take time if you want to make the right se­lec­tion-true, but are the de­f­i­n­i­tion of "right" from the politi­cian's per­spec­tive aligned with that of the rac­ing pub­lic? And if it is, ex­act­ly how much time is re­quired to make this right de­ci­sion?

It would ap­pear ob­vi­ous to even the ca­su­al ob­serv­er that all is not well with­in the cor­ri­dors of the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre over this ap­point­ment. If the Gov­ern­ment was unit­ed be­hind their orig­i­nal­ly des­ig­nat­ed chair­man, he would be in­stalled al­ready. Ma­haraj did, af­ter all, at­tend the Gov­ern­ment's vaunt­ed train­ing and ori­en­ta­tion pro­gramme for state chair­men and di­rec­tors over two months ago.

That no of­fi­cial ap­point­ment has been forth­com­ing sub­se­quent­ly should be in­ter­pret­ed by Ma­haraj as a se­ri­ous re­think­ing of the ap­point­ment. No need for even a "lit­tle birdie" to whis­per in his ears or in rac­ing terms a horse­fly to bite him on his neck. In many oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions (ex­cept the Mid­dle East and Africa), the in­di­vid­ual in­volved would un­doubt­ed­ly have sig­nalled that he/she was no longer in­ter­est­ed in the po­si­tion. The de­lay be­tween ad­vice and con­fir­ma­tion would have been too long for com­fort, far too long. While pride "goeth" be­fore the fall, in a sit­u­a­tion where the gov­ern­ment is not en­tire­ly sup­port­ive even be­fore ap­point­ment, even if ap­point­ed, the sit­u­a­tion would not be ten­able.

T&T is not like many oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, sad­ly. We have many in the po­lit­i­cal world, who can­not take a hint! So why should we re­al­ly be sur­prised that sports is no dif­fer­ent, af­ter all most ad­min­is­tra­tors in sports are a ver­sion (or form) of politi­cian them­selves. To help the Gov­ern­ment, I think the rac­ing in­dus­try needs to come out firm­ly and state that it does not want Ma­haraj as the chair­man of the board. There is no point in tip­toe­ing around the mat­ter-shout it from the rooftops, if that is in fact the po­si­tion. If it is no then do like­wise, but stop hedg­ing your bets, while horserac­ing is ground to a halt. The watch group Fix­in T&T did a very ef­fec­tive job of keep­ing is­sues cur­rent-maybe horserac­ing needs a sim­i­lar group to ad­vo­cate its po­si­tion pub­licly.

If let­ters have be­ has been made pub­lic to that ef­fect) and so this is one in which Ben­jai's so­ca tune Wine To De Side would seem most ap­pro­pri­ate. Why Ma­haraj would even want to put him­self in­to a sit­u­a­tion in which he was not want­ed begs un­der­stand­ing. The on­ly mo­tive could be sup­posed vin­dic­tive­ness-to maybe strike back at those who op­pose (d) the ap­point­ment. But ex­act­ly who would suf­fer in such a fight? Cer­tain­ly not the own­ers or those di­rect­ly in­volved in the fight since they are all suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men whose liveli­hood does not de­pend one io­ta on what hap­pens in the sport.

Those who will suf­fer are the grooms, gate han­dlers, jock­eys, train­ers (at least those who de­pend 100 per cent on the sport) and the oth­er an­cil­lary per­son­nel who de­pend on the sport for their liveli­hood.

Per­haps it is the fact that most per­sons be­lieve wrong­ful­ly that these in­di­vid­u­als are not im­por­tant, so that horserac­ing which em­ploys around 1,500 per­sons is ill equipped to put pres­sure on any­one to as­sist them. Of course the fact that most of the per­sons with a voice in horserac­ing are them­selves not de­pen­dent on this sport for their earn­ings means that yet again an­oth­er group of per­sons are be­ing dis­placed by those in au­thor­i­ty in this case the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.

As we have stat­ed in ar­ti­cles be­fore, if it is that the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz is not in­ter­est­ed or has no time to deal with horserac­ing, then he needs to be man enough to say that and re­lin­quish his con­trol over horserac­ing and pass it on to some­one else who cares for per­sons who are in des­per­ate need to earn a liv­ing like every­one else. For too long, there has been too much of one-up­man­ship in the horserac­ing in­dus­try with per­sons in pow­er on­ly con­cerned with what they can ex­tract from horserac­ing and this needs to be ad­dressed soon­er rather than lat­er by ap­point­ed the best per­son for the job of chair­man but one sens­es the lack of con­vic­tion from the pow­ers that be to do just what is right, which is a shame.

In the fi­nal analy­sis, more con­vic­tion is re­quired. Con­vic­tion from those op­posed to the ap­point­ment, to speak out pub­licly and let their op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing the rea­sons for same, is known. Con­vic­tion from Min­is­ter Cadiz-ei­ther you ap­point the man or you don't (and you ap­point some­one else). The pub­lic did not put you there to flim­flam, we do enough of that on our own! We put you there to act, make a de­ci­sion, any de­ci­sion is bet­ter than none at all. Some­times you will get it right, some­times you will get it wrong.

In 2015, we will let you know whether you got more right than wrong. For the time be­ing horserac­ing needs a chair­man des­per­ate­ly and this pro­cras­ti­na­tion is a sin, which may not be for­giv­en, even at East­er time.