Carl Ja­cobs

The T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion will hold a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on Sun­day in re­sponse to re­quests from five mem­ber clubs seek­ing in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing T&T's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­ing Olympiad and al­so call­ing for the ap­point­ment of a Stand­ing Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee to de­lib­er­ate "on mat­ters per­tain­ing to the best prac­tices of the As­so­ci­a­tion."

Valk­eries, one of the five, has ac­cused the T &TCA of be­ing "silent on where vi­tal mat­ters lie" and de­scribed the joint pe­ti­tion as a "wake-up call to our As­so­ci­a­tion" to ad­dress these con­cerns im­me­di­ate­ly in ac­cor­dance with Ar­ti­cle 5.1.1 of the con­sti­tu­tion.

The meet­ing will be held at St Georges Col­lege, Barataria.

Pal­adins, join­ing the five-club call, saw the need for an SGM "to quick­ly ad­dress the sad sit­u­a­tion the play­ers, their par­ents and coach­es have found them­selves in to rep­re­sent our coun­try at the World Olympiad."

Kings and Queens, in its pe­ti­tion, al­so refers to the is­sue of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with re­spect to the Olympiad teams, their train­ing and prepa­ra­tion.

The Ari­ma-based club al­so joined the call for a Stand­ing Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee "to ad­dress, in­ter alia, mat­ters per­tain­ing to best prac­tice with­in the T&TCA.

These may in­clude cri­te­ria for the se­lec­tion of play­ers, coach­es and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tionar­ies for tour­na­ment du­ties among oth­ers."

The ini­tia­tive for this joint call came from vet­er­an play­er and coach Hamza Dean who is al­so pres­i­dent of the Moru­ga Chess Club. Mak­ing up the five is SCUTT, led by Rus­sel Smith.

All five pe­ti­tions were writ­ten by the clubs and re­ceived by the As­so­ci­a­tion to­wards the end of April. The rea­son and pur­pose be­hind their ini­tia­tive are clear­ly ex­pressed. In­deed, DR has heard sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, at least one of whom had been a mem­ber of pre­vi­ous T&T Olympiad teams.

Some time af­ter re­ceiv­ing the clubs' re­quests, the As­so­ci­a­tion re­spond­ed by hold­ing a meet­ing to deal with their con­cerns.

DR has since learned that the As­so­ci­a­tion has been able to ob­tain the ser­vices of two IMs from Ger­many to pre­pare the men's and women's teams, via coach­ing ses­sions on line.

As play­ers from a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, mem­bers of the T&T teams would al­so qual­i­fy for a spe­cial FIDE sub­sidy to help meet their trav­el­ling ex­pens­es, as an­nounced by the world chess body.

How­ev­er, it seems some­what un­for­tu­nate to DR that mem­ber chess clubs should be­come so con­cerned about the op­er­a­tion of their As­so­ci­a­tion that they re­sort to pe­ti­tions to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion about vi­tal mat­ters such as the coun­try's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the world's pre­mier in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and to seek ap­point­ment of a Stand­ing Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee to ad­dress "mat­ters per­tain­ing to best prac­tice with­in the T&TCA."

To be true to its es­sen­tial struc­ture and pur­pose, the na­tion­al chess body must be as trans­par­ent and forth­com­ing as pos­si­ble. Made up of mem­ber clubs, it can­not op­er­ate as a closed shop. When he as­sumed of­fice, in fact, the As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent clear­ly recog­nised this as he de­clared his pol­i­cy of "go­ing back to the clubs."

How­ev­er, in the widest sense, the or­gan­i­sa­tion's re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ex­tend, in fact, to the en­tire so­ci­ety from which it con­stant­ly seeks fi­nan­cial sup­port. Send­ing teams to the Olympiad, for ex­am­ple, is a mat­ter of na­tion­al pres­tige about which not on­ly mem­ber clubs but the en­tire pop­u­la­tion should be kept ful­ly in­formed.

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