High-handed use and abuse of power and authority, shaped by the historical antecedents of imperialism, colonialism, slavery and the slave master syndrome, is having significant negative consequences on long-term athlete and sport development in Trinidad and Tobago.
Sport administrators are frustrating young sportsmen and sportswomen out of sport, nurturing hate, anger and resentment that acts as an enabling factor in the epidemic of youth violence, gang culture, and crime in T&T and the wider Caribbean. Some Olympic sport leaders wield their own iteration of corporal punishment–handed down from the colonial and slave-master model of abuse–as a tool for control and discipline.
Ongoing decisions by sport administrators and sport organisations that destroy the dreams and self-worth of young athletes continue both above and under the radar. Olympic sport organisations are guilty of it, including national Olympic committees.
In September 2006, I completed an Executive Masters degree on an International Olympic Committee (IOC) scholarship. My thesis focused on governance. At the time, few such studies existed. Rereading it years later, I realise that even though it sits in the IOC and T&T Olympic Committee (TTOC) archives, not many in the TTOC–far less the wider Caribbean–have read it.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Twenty (20) years later–two decades later– the Thesis project remains valid and relevant.
The lack of awareness regarding the document may be my fault; a reluctance to “self-promote” is a failure on my part. Given its focus, it should be part of any discourse on research on sport governance in the T&T and the Caribbean, even if its conclusions, methodology and recommendations are to be debunked and criticised by scholars, academics and researchers in sport management and administration.
As a reminder that the research project was completed in September 2006, I will share a brief excerpt: Sheilah Solomon, in a Sunday Guardian interview (July 23, 2006), expressed the view that politics in T&T was stuck in a “stick-fighting syndrome” of governance. Asked to explain her comment, she stated that “the Caribbean had no history of democracy pre independence and what happened is that a different group took over from the Colonial masters.”
The history of sport in T&T is unquestionably linked to the nation’s colonial past. Sport, in general, was considered one of the cultural foundation of British colonial policy and was introduced to the region by British military officers and plantation owners. Inextricably, the history of sport therefore is connected to other aspects of colonial society–class, race, and politics (Brereton B, 1981). McCree (1995, 2000, 2004) noted that historically, sport has been excluded from official and dominant notions of economic development in the Caribbean, postulating that this was so given the historical roles assigned to sport derived from the colonial orthodox view of sport.
Another excerpt from the “Conclusions” section stated: Because the sport organisations are self-governing organisations, effective governance and accountability must begin in the respective organisation, no matter how small or large. The individual sport organisations must accept responsibility for their own modernisation. It became clear during the course of this research project that sport leaders by their own admission are struggling to cope with the demands of the modern sport environment. Athletes have expressed frustration at what they perceive to be incompetence .They have accused sport leaders of being selfish. One young athlete said that the sport administrators were “frustrating her out of the sport.”
Reminder: Excerpts are from a 2006 Thesis.
