Carl Ja­cobs

The T&T chess com­mu­ni­ty may breathe a sigh of re­lief, and per­haps re­gret, over the de­par­ture of Rus­sell Smith as pres­i­dent of the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion.At last Sat­ur­day's gath­er­ing, sum­moned as the or­gan­i­sa­tion's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, Smith an­nounced both his res­ig­na­tion and his in­ten­tion not to stand for re-elec­tion.His ges­ture was hard­ly un­ex­pect­ed as it seemed the on­ly way to end the bit­ter dis­pute he had pro­voked by his un­nec­es­sary and un­fair at­tempt to change the se­lec­tion cri­te­ria for next year's Olympiad in Nor­way.

That on­go­ing and con­tentious gam­bit had re­vealed some­thing au­to­crat­ic about the pres­i­dent's ad­min­is­tra­tive style but, even be­yond that, the fact that the AGM it­self had to be abort­ed be­cause it was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sum­moned by him was an em­bar­rass­ing blun­der that seemed to cast ad­di­tion­al doubt on his ca­pac­i­ty to lead such an or­gan­i­sa­tion.High­light of Sat­ur­day's meet­ing in fact was the dra­mat­ic in­ter­ven­tion of for­mer pres­i­dent Quintin Cabralis who, quot­ing from the con­sti­tu­tion, point­ed out that the meet­ing had been im­prop­er­ly called and, there­fore, null and void.To be­gin with, Smith had erred in call­ing the AGM him­self when he did not have the au­thor­i­ty to do so. This task is cor­rect­ly as­signed to any mem­ber of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee to be des­ig­nat­ed by the pres­i­dent.

More im­por­tant­ly, Cabralis showed, the prop­er pro­ce­dure had not been fol­lowed as Smith's no­tice did not in­clude such re­quired in­for­ma­tion as the names of his ex­ec­u­tive and an agen­da for the meet­ing.Cabralis re­mind­ed the gath­er­ing of T&TCA mem­bers that the as­so­ci­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion was "the law" gov­ern­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's op­er­a­tion and it had to be fol­lowed to the let­ter.Lat­er he ex­plained to DR that, as pres­i­dent of his club, Kings and Queens, he re­ceived no­tice of the AGM three days be­fore its sched­uled date when it should have been de­liv­ered at least 14 days in ad­vance.

That was the first er­ror alert­ing him to how far the process had drift­ed from re­quire­ments of the con­sti­tu­tion.In fact, the ex-T&TCA pres­i­dent point­ed out that all the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ings which Smith had called be­fore were al­so un­con­sti­tu­tion­al for the same rea­sons.In light of such fun­da­men­tal er­rors and omis­sions, DR is left to won­der at the ad­min­is­tra­tive acu­men of pres­i­dent Smith and mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive.Did any of them ever see the ne­ces­si­ty of gain­ing at least a work­ing knowl­edge of the as­so­ci­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion? Ig­nor­ing its re­quire­ments was clear­ly a recipe for dis­as­ter.

The fact that five of­fi­cers re­signed to­geth­er with Smith, leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion vir­tu­al­ly head­less, seems on­ly fit­ting as they ap­par­ent­ly just went along for the ride.Their threat to quit about six weeks ago when FM Mario Mer­ritt's pro­to­col let­ter threat­ened court ac­tion al­so ex­pos­es the qual­i­ty of their "ded­i­ca­tion" to the as­so­ci­a­tion's mis­sion and its need to act fair­ly and wise­ly.How sad it is that, at a time when chess needs a unit­ed and com­mit­ted ap­proach to take it for­ward, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport should suf­fer such a griev­ous col­lapse.

How un­for­tu­nate al­so that the leader who was in a unique po­si­tion, as pres­i­dent of FIDE Amer­i­c­as, to as­sist that move­ment should pre­side in­stead over this most dis­tress­ing episode in T&TCA his­to­ry.

DR records this sad dra­ma with a feel­ing of deep re­gret but al­so with the hope that its lessons, par­tic­u­lar­ly the need for good sense, prop­er pro­ce­dure and co­op­er­a­tion, will not be lost on those who will now un­der­take the task of ad­min­is­ter­ing this great and valu­able sport.So where do we go from here? How can we put this set­back be­hind us and set the As­so­ci­a­tion back on an even and pro­gres­sive keel?Cabralis and Clay­ton Gomez, two con­sti­tu­tion­al "ex­perts" are agreed on the nec­es­sary steps for­ward.The four-man tri­bunal, led by Car­lyle Singh, must now act at the re­quest of at least four mem­ber clubs.The tri­bunal will be giv­en the task of or­gan­is­ing a fresh AGM, set­ting the date and place be­fore the end of June.

Clear­ly, the As­so­ci­a­tion des­per­ate­ly needs a new pres­i­dent and ex­ec­u­tive who will be com­mit­ted not on­ly to restor­ing its re­spect and ad­min­is­tra­tive viril­i­ty but al­so to ar­tic­u­lat­ing and pur­su­ing a vi­sion for the sport that would earn the pos­i­tive and tan­gi­ble sup­port of both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.For­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on and busi­ness con­sul­tant An­der­son Gor­don is a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date that DR would strong­ly en­dorse as a leader hav­ing the skill, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ex­per­tise, love for the sport and, above all, the per­son­al in­tegri­ty nec­es­sary for the task.If he would ac­cept a piece of ad­vice, in the in­ter­est of the game, he should steer clear of the few trou­ble­mak­ers and pow­erseek­ers who still in­hab­it the chess world.