An­dre E Bap­tiste

All across the de­vel­op­ing world we are wit­ness­ing a spate of Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Nige­ria, Pe­ru and Por­tu­gal are among the coun­tries which have re­cent­ly held or will be hold­ing elec­tions in the com­ing months. You can now add to the list the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of the Ari­ma Race Club (ARC) sched­uled to be held on Sun­day May 22. Few in T&T can hon­est­ly say they care about the elec­tions in the coun­tries above and maybe even less care about the ARC elec­tions. But for those few who are in­ter­est­ed in the ARC votes, the con­se­quences of an ad­verse out­come are grave. Giv­en the sub­terfuge, back­bit­ing and de­ceit that seems to re­side among the horserac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, it is prob­a­bly nec­es­sary for a re­quest to be made to the Unit­ed Na­tions for in­de­pen­dent ob­servers to mon­i­tor the con­duct of these elec­tions. Cari­com ob­servers sim­ply wouldn't suf­fice since there is the per­cep­tion that they could be eas­i­ly prone to ma­nip­u­la­tion–maybe that is al­so the rea­son for the lack of re­gion­al sup­port for the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice?

And if it is, it would be some­what iron­ic in that the chal­lenge from the left in this pres­i­den­tial race is from a slate of (in­de­pen­dent or maybe uni­fied) at­tor­neys. The pres­i­den­tial race has boiled down to a race be­tween Pier­pont Scott (the in­cum­bent) and Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo (the chal­lenger). The in­trigue re­volves around the role of the ex-Pres­i­dent and Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB) chair­man hope­ful Ka­ma Ma­haraj. This odyssey be­gan some­time late last year, when in prepa­ra­tion for as­sum­ing the BLB chair­man­ship, Ma­haraj re­lin­quished his po­si­tion as ARC Pres­i­dent and Pier­pont Scott re­placed him. The BLB chair­man­ship is still in lim­bo and as such, for as long as it re­mains in this state, Mr Ma­haraj can­not throw his hat back in­to the ring for the ARC Pres­i­den­cy. Like some­thing out of the day­time soap opera-As The World Turns-up popped Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo, the ap­par­ent con­fi­dante and ad­vi­sor to Mr Ma­haraj (at least on horse mat­ters) to throw his hat in­to the ring. The in­trigue is on­ly just be­gin­ning. Kan­ga­loo was a well-known ad­vi­sor to Ma­haraj dur­ing the lat­ter's tenure as Pres­i­dent, so much so, that it is al­leged that it was re­al­ly Ma­haraj and Kan­ga­loo who made the de­ci­sions and not the Board of the Ari­ma Race Club, of which Scott was al­so a mem­ber.

It could very well be that Kan­ga­loo was re­al­ly the knowl­edge and the brain be­hind the de­ci­sions since his in­volve­ment in the sport and knowl­edge of the game is ar­guably su­pe­ri­or to that of Ma­haraj's. What­ev­er the true na­ture of the dy­nam­ics be­tween those two gen­tle­men, the re­al­i­ty is we now have a two-horse race in a bid to run the ARC. Let us look at some of the oth­er dy­nam­ics at stake or in play. The ARC, to­geth­er with the T&T Rac­ing Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) and the Bet­ting Levy Board (BLB) form the tri­umvi­rate that de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the sport in this coun­try. Of these three en­ti­ties, the on­ly one with its lead­er­ship con­firmed is the TTRA, which is be­ing led by Derek Chin, who is him­self a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the ARC.

Chin is the broth­er-in-law of Scott and ru­moured to be on the worst of terms with Ma­haraj. It is not clear what is the na­ture of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Chin and Kan­ga­loo. Are you con­fused as yet? If so, do not be dis­mayed be­cause leg­endary horserac­ing fic­tion jour­nal­ist Dick Fran­cis, whose nov­els are clean­ly craft­ed and clev­er­ly twist­ed, would strug­gle to imag­ine all of this and re­main sane. If we set aside all of this and look at what it takes to suc­cess­ful­ly lead the ARC in a new di­rec­tion, there are many very strong pos­i­tives in favour of Scott. Scott is a well-known and very suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man who knows what it takes to make a busi­ness suc­ceed. That is the ap­proach need­ed for rac­ing in T&T.

Scott's fam­i­ly has a long and rich tra­di­tion in horse rac­ing in this coun­try and through­out the Caribbean and even in the first world coun­tries such as the Unit­ed King­dom. His vi­sion is there­fore not like­ly to be lim­it­ed by what usu­al­ly con­fines small is­land thinkers. Nor is he pure­ly a rac­ing man, since he is al­so ac­tive­ly in­volved in the breed­ing side of the in­dus­try. His love of the sport and sports­man­like ap­proach to his in­volve­ment are traits which most in­volved in the sport would do well to adopt. It is of­ten said that you can tell the cal­iber of an in­di­vid­ual by how they han­dle de­feat and dis­ap­point­ment and in this re­gard Scott can­not be fault­ed. Dur­ing his cur­rent stint as Pres­i­dent, he has al­ready avert­ed one dis­as­ter aris­ing out of the BLB's re­fusal to meet out­stand­ing monies due to the court al­leged­ly be­cause of the ab­sence of a chair­man. He has al­so been out on the streets try­ing to drum up ad­di­tion­al spon­sor­ship for the sport. He is al­so not afraid to ask for oth­er's opin­ions and clear­ly is a man that un­der­stands it takes a team to build an in­dus­try and not a mere "group" of friends.

In Kan­ga­loo's favour would be his le­gal back­ground which should as­sist in dis­cern­ing the true is­sues un­der­lin­ing the sport, al­though those are fair­ly ob­vi­ous, even to this writer. His in­volve­ment in the sport, al­though not as wide or as deep as Scott, is still very ex­ten­sive and he has close re­la­tion­ships with many of the lead­ing own­ers in the coun­try who re­spect his knowl­edge of blood­lines and ul­ti­mate­ly his eye for pedi­gree. His ef­fort to re­vi­talise the im­por­ta­tions in­to this coun­try, with some in­no­v­a­tive ideas has to be ful­ly re­spect­ed. The fact that a num­ber of oth­er at­tor­neys have thrown their hat in the ring for oth­er po­si­tions on the Ex­ec­u­tive could be an­oth­er plus for Kan­ga­loo since it means that he should be able to se­cure more sup­port in ex­e­cut­ing his agen­da. On the down side would be the fact that most of the names called are not well known per­son­al­i­ties in the sport and so it is not clear how they would be able to tru­ly as­sist in achiev­ing what­ev­er agen­da is in mind.Al­so there are a lot of per­sons that are gen­er­al­ly wary of lawyers giv­ing this coun­try's ex­pe­ri­ence with so many lawyers in­volved with gov­ern­ment over the last 25 years.

One thing is cer­tain, both men are in­tel­li­gent and free thinkers and do not need horserac­ing monies to sur­vive in any form or fash­ion...and that to me is crit­i­cal in this en­tire vot­ing mat­ter. How­ev­er what the in­dus­try needs is a leader with more than just ideas as to what can be done to pre­serve its fu­ture, it needs a leader who can ex­e­cute these ideas. Both can­di­dates for Pres­i­den­cy need to ar­tic­u­late their vi­sion for the sport and elab­o­rate on how they will make that vi­sion a re­al­i­ty. There­fore I would sug­gest a de­bate with both men and the rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, which can be arranged by All Sports Pro­mo­tion and An­tho­ny Har­ford, whose in­de­pen­dence can­not be fault­ed or ques­tioned. This is not a 20/20 sit­u­a­tion, the in­dus­try needs a 2012 vi­sion and con­crete plans to get us there. There is no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od; the leader needs to hit the ground run­ning. Too of­ten, mem­bers' in­ter­est in the ARC elec­tions range from ap­a­thy to an­i­mos­i­ty. No one who pro­fess­es to care about the sport can re­main on the touch lines any longer. It is time for all mem­bers of the ARC to ask their po­ten­tial lead­ers to com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly where they see the sport and their in­tend­ed role in pro­pelling that jour­ney. If it is one thing that the sport can­not af­ford at this time is a di­vid­ed tri­umvi­rate. The ARC, BLB and TTRA need to find a way to work to­geth­er in the com­mon in­ter­est of the sport. If they don't or can't, then any vic­to­ry in the ARC elec­tions will be pyrrhic. For the first time in a very long time, there are two wor­thy con­tenders, men with pres­tige and ho­n­our, it will be a pity if they can­not work to­geth­er in the best in­ter­est of the sport.