Trinidad PM warns West Indies cricket could 'destroy' CARICOM
The Caribbean Is One Nation.
Trinidad and Tobago
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley
Sunday,
July 09, 2017
PORT
OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley
has warned that the situation regarding the state of West Indies cricket had
the potential to “destroy” the regional integration grouping, CARICOM, because
of the differences among the regional leaders on the issue.
Rowley
said he was surprised when he did not see the matter of West Indies cricket on
the agenda for the just concluded 38th meeting of Heads of Government in
Grenada last week and “I tried to ask whether it could be put back on the
agenda and interestingly enough when I raised it…asking whether we could have a
re-visit... To put back the Committee (CARICOM sub-Committee on Cricket) which
would focus on whether we are prepared to drop the issue and interestingly
after I spoke, not another sound was made at the table,” he told the I-Sports
radio programme here on Saturday night, indicating that the silence may have
been as a result of regional leaders having non-unified position on the matter.
“The
subject has become one that threatens our very unity among us on the table,” he
said, repeating his statement that following his suggestion that the matter be
placed on the agenda “not a single person leading our territories joined and as
a result of it there was no comment on West Indies cricket.
“Isn't
that interesting,” he asked, noting that the Venezuela situation as not placed
on the agenda but was put there after he raised the matter.
Rowley
told radio listeners that “the current arrangement in West Indies cricket is
not just destroying cricket as a game…what is happening at the level of heads
at CARICOM should make it clear to the other people that the game is now and
the management and the situation is threatening to destroy CARICOM itself.
“Because
when one leader who is hosting, the others could walk away because of something
he said about what is going on in cricket and…what is happening with a
particular country that is apparently benefitting from the current arrangement,
all kinds of issues arise and in that scenario CARICOM is long sight of what
really should be happening,” he added.
His
statements were in an apparent reference to the statement made by CARICOM
chairman and a host Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell at the start of the annual
summit last Tuesday night.
Mitchell
told the ceremony that it was “greatly disheartening” to see regional leaders
agree to a unified position in private, only to then announce opposing
positions publicly.
“The
legacies that have been created by our players on the field, and the voice they
have given throughout generations, to expressions of West Indian identity, have
been well-documented and chronicled through the years,” said Mitchell, a former
chairman of CARICOM's Prime Ministerial sub-committee on cricket.
“So,
when we get together to discuss the current challenges of the regional game, it
is not merely a case of politicians dabbling in some useless pastime.”
Mitchell
urged the regional heads to stand in unity behind CARICOM decisions, adding
that with Cricket West Indies (CWI) not discharging its role, CARICOM had a
responsibility to act.
But
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne defended his government's
position insisting that it has a policy of not interfering “in the internal
affairs of institutions and governments”
Browne,
in a statement to the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) said that the
governance of West Indies cricket “appears to be an evocative romanticism of a
particular Caribbean head”.
Browne,
who left the summit following the opening ceremony, in his statement sent to
CMC, noted that “the board operates independently of governments (and) now
there is a particular head who is of the view, and if I may add here, the
flawed opinion that with my support and other heads that he could achieve his
compulsive, obsessive desire to dissolve the board.”
Rowley
recalled that soon after assuming office here, he attended the 27th inter
sessional CARICOM Heads of Government Conference in Belize last year, where a
decision was taken to enforce the recommendations of the CARICOM Governance
Review Commission – chief of which was the “immediate dissolution” of the then
West Indies Cricket Board recently renamed Cricket West Indies.
But
he said that West Indies Cricket Board “reneged on the position of accepting
the findings of the Committee because one of the findings was to dismantle the
current arrangement, put an interim arrangement in place and work a way
forward….
“Mr
(Dave) Cameron (CAI President) told us to our faces they are not accepting that
because West Indies cricket is really West Indies Cricket Inc…and they are
beholding to their shareholders and not to any CARICOM leadership”.
Rowley
said that the current in-fighting within CARICOM is probably providing strength
to CWI because “they are not facing a united front to be challenged where their
position can be subjected to the rule of law.
“What
you are saying is that the Caribbean leadership is not able to deal with the
issue and therefore, they are on their own and as long as they lay claim to
West Indies cricket unchallenged because of the fracturing of the Caribbean
leadership they can go on and do this for as long as they want. That is the
message they are going to get from this,” he added.
Rowley
warned that the longer the situation remains unresolved “the more of what you
saw happening in Grenada this week, where one prime minister offends another
prime minister and walks out of the meeting, la la la that is likely to become
the future”.
Rowley
said he is prepared to serve as a member of the CARICOM subcommittee on Cricket
which is under the chairmanship of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime
Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves.
But
he said he was not optimistic that a solution to the West Indies cricket crisis
could be achieved in 2017.
From the Jamaica Observer
From the Jamaica Observer
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