Carl Ja­cobs

Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion finds it­self wan­der­ing in a kind of no-man's land. Af­ter the abort­ed an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing three weeks ago and the res­ig­na­tion of six mem­bers of its man­age­ment com­mit­tee, the As­so­ci­a­tion is now not on­ly head­less but al­so grop­ing through the con­sti­tu­tion for a way to re­con­sti­tute it­self. The ob­vi­ous route for­ward, of course, would be to sum­mon an­oth­er AGM but, with on­ly two mem­bers still "in of­fice," the man­age­ment com­mit­tee is un­able to muster a three-per­son quo­rum and, there­fore, with­out the con­sti­tu­tion­al strength to call such a meet­ing.

There are a few con­cerned mem­bers who be­lieve that vice pres­i­dent Rod­er­ick Noel, who has not re­signed, can still act on his own. When asked about this, for­mer pres­i­dent Quintin Cabralis re­gard­ed such a move as du­bi­ous since, as he ex­plains, meet­ings and de­ci­sions of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee are re­quired to be min­ut­ed and kept for records. In­stead of this, Cabralis be­lieves the next best step would be to call up­on the As­so­ci­a­tion's Tri­bunal to do the need­ful. The pres­i­dent of Kings and Queens Chess Club said, in fact, that he had tak­en the ini­tia­tive in this re­gard, pe­ti­tion­ing the Tri­bunal, un­der ar­ti­cle 5.1.1., to con­vene the AGM with­in 30 days of his no­tice dat­ed May 12. To­geth­er with K&Q, this move has sub­se­quent­ly gained the sup­port of three oth­er clubs, Check­maters, Pal­ladins and Cen­tral Vikings, pro­vid­ing at least 33 1/3 of the As­so­ci­a­tion's mem­ber­ship.

If, for what­ev­er rea­son, the Tri­bunal is un­able to con­vene the AGM then, as the con­sti­tu­tion states, "this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty pass­es se­quen­tial­ly to the Board of Trustees."

It is un­for­tu­nate that the or­gan­i­sa­tion gov­ern­ing the sport of chess in our coun­try should have tum­bled in­to such an un­prece­dent­ed morass from an on-go­ing dis­pute be­tween the ex­ec­u­tive and a group of lead­ing play­ers. As DR has ob­served, the ar­gu­ment could have been set­tled with­out ran­cour or se­ri­ous dam­age had good sense and a com­mit­ment to fair­play pre­vailed. How­ev­er, as in all fierce­ly con­test­ed chess games, there are mem­o­rable lessons to be learned from this re­gret­table con­fronta­tion. Per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant of these is that, in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion, hubris is al­ways a de­struc­tive gam­bit.

As an es­teemed mind game with a unique uni­ver­sal cul­ture, chess, in fact should em­body the virtues of sports­man­ship, friend­ly ri­val­ry and prob­lem solv­ing per­haps more than any oth­er sport.

As far as the As­so­ci­a­tion's out­dat­ed con­sti­tu­tion is con­cerned, the cur­rent im­broglio al­so em­bod­ies an ur­gent call for change and im­prove­ment. Ac­cord­ing to Cabralis, "it's no­body's fault that the con­sti­tu­tion does not en­vis­age a sit­u­a­tion such as this where six out of eight of­fi­cers re­sign. The need, then, is for greater clar­i­ty and di­rec­tion with re­spect to such mat­ters."

The K&Q pres­i­dent al­so points out that the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides no clear guid­ance on the sta­tus of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee in light of mem­bers re­sign­ing. "For ex­am­ple, vice pres­i­dent Rod­er­ick Noel seems to be­lieve that even with­out a quo­rum he can still per­form the func­tions of the man­age­ment com­mit­tee."

As a re­sult, this now be­comes a mat­ter of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, he says, and "adopt­ing the spir­it of the con­sti­tu­tion we can on­ly de­duce that with­out a quo­rum this com­mit­tee can­not ex­ist."

The T&T con­sti­tu­tion re­quires the AGM to be held with­in the first half of each year. That leaves on­ly a month for the process of re­con­sti­tut­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion to be com­plet­ed. What hap­pens if the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­ce­dures nec­es­sary to achieve this are still drag­ging on be­yond this date?

These are some of the is­sues that Clay­ton Gomez must ad­dress as he un­der­take the task of re­vis­ing the T&TCA con­sti­tu­tion.

It would be un­for­tu­nate if the As­so­ci­a­tion is not re­con­sti­tut­ed in time to han­dle arrange­ments for T&T to be rep­re­sent­ed at the Caribbean Team Cham­pi­onship to be held in Guyana next month. This tour­na­ment has two sig­nif­i­cant ob­jec­tives. First, it would ef­fec­tive­ly rein­tro­duce Guyana in­to the re­gion­al chess are­na and, sec­ond­ly, it would re­vive a tour­na­ment that once played an im­por­tant part in the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment.

Not on­ly is the T&T na­tion­al team still to be se­lect­ed but arrange­ments for their trav­el to George­town have to be fi­nalised. Room and board are be­ing pro­vid­ed by the spon­sors.

Over the years, DR has con­sis­tent­ly ar­gued for a re­vival of this tour­na­ment which not on­ly pro­duced a Caribbean cham­pi­on but al­so, like crick­et, helped to keep the re­gion­al spir­it alive.

DR doubts whether any record of the his­to­ry of this tour­na­ment sur­vives. Mem­bers of the T&T team, stal­warts such as George Stan­ford, Frank Brass­ing­ton, Carl Brown and Fred Sab­ga were proud to bring home the huge and hand­some Trinidad Guardian tro­phy on more than one oc­ca­sion.

Al­so what­ev­er be­came of this tro­phy built in Lon­don, the sym­bol of West In­di­an chess su­prema­cy, no­body knows.

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