Carl Ja­cobs

What, in heav­en's name, is hap­pen­ing in the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion? A state of chaos seems to have de­scend­ed on the or­gan­i­sa­tion, bring­ing its op­er­a­tions to a vir­tu­al stand­still. This is the pic­ture re­vealed in a most un­pleas­ant se­ries of e-mail is­sued by two mem­bers of the T&T ex­ec­u­tive, each ac­cus­ing the oth­er of ac­tion or in­ac­tion af­fect­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's progress. One se­ri­ous prob­lem ap­pears to be the non-sign­ing of cheques which, ac­cord­ing to sec­ond vice pres­i­dent FM Ryan Harp­er, has re­sult­ed in sus­pen­sion of the coach­ing pro­gramme for both the men and women Olympiad teams. Harp­er blames this sit­u­a­tion on first vice pres­i­dent Bhisham Soon­dars­ingh who, he says, re­fused to co­op­er­ate in the sig­nage of the cheques. Ap­par­ent­ly, the cheque sign­ing prob­lem had arisen in the "ab­sence" of trea­sur­er Rus­sell Smith who was sus­pend­ed sev­er­al months ago on a num­ber of charges. How­ev­er, the As­so­ci­a­tion's ap­peal tri­bunal, af­ter due con­sid­er­a­tion, has com­plete­ly ex­on­er­at­ed Smith who was re-in­stat­ed in of­fice a few weeks ago.

The un­avail­abil­i­ty of the trea­sur­er, how­ev­er, should not re­al­ly have cre­at­ed such an im­passe and, in fact, is not the on­ly cause for the spir­it of con­tention that now ex­ists with­in the na­tion­al chess body. In his e-mail last Mon­day Harp­er adds: "No longer should we al­low peo­ple like Mr Soon­dars­ingh to re­tard progress. The chess com­mu­ni­ty is not big. Chess needs for­ward think­ing peo­ple now, not grumpy peo­ple look­ing for pow­er in a sport with such a small com­mu­ni­ty." In his turn, Soon­dars­ingh de­clares that he does not need any "pow­er" in chess since he is the longest serv­ing mem­ber of the T&TCA. He ac­cus­es Harp­er of self­ish­ness, among oth­er things. He claims Harp­er's con­tact with chess coach GM Alon­so Za­p­a­ta "at this time is on his own and not with T&TCA." He asks, "Why me and not the trea­sur­er to sign the cheque?"

He points out that As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Kam­la Ram­per­sad De­Sil­va al­so re­fused to sign the cheque. He al­so wants to know why the PRO and the third vice pres­i­dent Dr Ram­per­sad were asked to re­con­sid­er their res­ig­na­tions while the sec­re­tary (who hap­pened to be his daugh­ter &Ar­ing;di­ti Soon­dars­ingh) was not. "Why so many res­ig­na­tions?" he adds. "I have nev­er seen this hap­pen be­fore." An­oth­er di­vi­sive is­sue is, amaz­ing­ly enough, the sta­tus of Soon­dars­ingh's daugh­ter. Harp­er states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that she is no longer the As­so­ci­a­tion's sec­re­tary. "She has re­signed and her res­ig­na­tion was ac­cept­ed at the ninth ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing."

He there­fore in­forms the chess com­mu­ni­ty that "cor­re­spon­dence from her is sole­ly of her own and not that of the TTCA." Soon­dars­ingh, how­ev­er, ac­cus­es Harp­er of not telling the truth since his daugh­ter's res­ig­na­tion as sec­re­tary comes in­to ef­fect on June 14, the date of the T&TCA's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing. "She does not care to be sec­re­tary but stays on to pre­vent lies, dis­hon­esty and cor­rup­tion," he adds.

In ad­di­tion, he claims that Harp­er will have to re­pay the As­so­ci­a­tion out­stand­ing monies he has been own­ing for a long time, be­fore he can go to the Olympiad. The first vice pres­i­dent says that Harp­er has been "fired from all deal­ings with the coach GM Za­p­a­ta." And, fur­ther­more, that "Ryan and Kam­la are re­spon­si­ble for the Min­istry of Sport not ap­prov­ing the sub­ven­tion for chess this year." In re­ply, Harp­er ob­serves: "Cer­tain­ly its in­ter­est­ing that Mr Soon­dars­ingh would make such state­ments. How­ev­er its not sur­pris­ing." He notes that the coach­ing pro­gramme with GM Za­p­a­ta is "still on­go­ing and I am cur­rent­ly over­see­ing the fi­nal pro­ceed­ings of it." Harp­er, it seems, is con­fi­dent of hav­ing the last laugh on the res­ig­na­tion is­sue. He says: "Cer­tain­ly, when we play the au­dio prov­ing the ac­cep­tance of Adi­ti's res­ig­na­tion we will hear the part where it was ac­cept­ed by her very own fa­ther Mr Soon­dars­ingh."

On the ques­tion of sign­ing cheques, the sec­ond vice pres­i­dent states pos­i­tive­ly that he does not have the au­thor­i­ty to do so since he is not a sig­na­to­ry. Al­so, he points out that the man­age­ment com­mit­tee has had no prob­lem with his han­dling of the As­so­ci­a­tion's coach­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Fi­nal­ly, Harp­er as­sures Soon­dars­ingh that "every­thing will come to light", ex­press­ing the hope that Soon­dars­ingh "can be so open in front of an au­di­ence." Harp­er as­sures: "I know I cer­tain­ly can, I have noth­ing to hide." This an­gry ex­change of e-mail be­tween two ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers re­veals a tru­ly sad state of dis­uni­ty in the body re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing the sport of chess in the coun­try. In a re­al sense it is trag­ic since the game ur­gent­ly needs a unit­ed and con­cert­ed de­vel­op­men­tal ef­fort not on­ly to pro­duce play­ers of in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard but al­so to have its cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits em­ployed as tools in the coun­try's ed­u­ca­tion process. Dou­ble Rooks be­lieves that the time has come for all good mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion to come to the aid of the sport they love. The most ap­pro­pri­ate oc­ca­sion, of course, for such a can­did air­ing of prob­lems with a con­se­quent purg­ing and re­new­al would be at the T&TCA's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing which is due in a month's time. There are for­tu­nate­ly still one or two T&TCA mem­ber clubs with an im­pec­ca­ble his­to­ry of con­tribut­ing to the sport of chess. Dou­ble Rooks sin­cere­ly urges them, how­ev­er re­luc­tant they may be to do so, to come for­ward and use their in­flu­ence in help­ing to put the T&TCA back on an even keel.