Business as Usual

The WICB governance caravan departed Dominica a week ago in very much the same way as it arrived; nonstop controversy covered in a veil of secrecy without giving the local and regional media an opportunity of a post meeting press conference. Local media houses in Roseau reported that they were informed by the Fort Young Hotel authorities that the WICB did not want any reporters on the premises during and after the meeting.

These circumstances contrasted significantly with the pomp and ceremony of the inauguration type post meeting press conference when Reverend Wes Hall and E Valentine Banks were installed as President and Vice President two years ago in Barbados.

Wes Hall had identified the main or core objective of his presidency as the healing and the unity of all stakeholders of West Indies Cricket. At the end of his reign, the situation has even worsened.

The 2003 AGM ended with the members, Board of Directors and staff split down the middle and a WICB leaderless, and badly divided and he had failed to install his (or rather the Executive Committee's) handpicked successor.

Chetram Singh in a Nation Newspaper interview the week after his withdrawal, came out punching and is reported to have said that "there was an executive body, temporarily headed by vice-president Val Banks, in place to run West Indies cricket."

We all know the infamous Executive Committee of the Board ran things over the past two years, but what executive body was Singh referring to? We had come to the conclusion, that 'Executive Committee' was now a bad word, having regard to the disrepute into which it plunged the WICB. Quite a few West Indians and stakeholders considered bringing charges under the WICB Code of Conduct (Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee is Lennox John) against the infamous sub-committee for bringing the game and the organisation into disrepute.

One other Director, Ellis Lewis, who participated at many an EC meeting was more careful in his comments to the T&T newspapers when he suggested that the WICB can be managed in the interim by the CEO Brathwaite and his senior Executives.

We know that the JCA tabled a resolution at the Roseau AGM, seeking to provide for the three directors other than the President and Vice President to be from three different territories and from territories different from the President and Vice President. Had this resolution passed it would have meant that Stephen Alleyne would not have been eligible if, say, Wes Hall had continued as President.

The resolution did not receive support, why, we cannot understand, especially since that was the arrangement that defined the previous EC under Pat Rousseau. A compromise was reached however, and the Board agreed to have its Solicitors Clarke and Company review the Articles of Association to determine what changes were required to put the WICB in good stead for the future.

This is an important exercise and I hope that the members take this seriously since the Articles and Memorandum define the scope of the company's operations, the way the company is run and the relationship between all the shareholders. Historically, the provisions of the articles have not been adhered to by the Board and the EC and this has given rise to lot of controversy in the WICB.

Sources say that Directors on one side of the divide at the WICB state that failure to appoint or contract a full time Secretary or full time Secretarial Services is a starting point to the problems. The records of the WICB are a mess and decisions are readily ignored because a Secretary is not available to provide a review of past decisions. Directors have been heard to say that they have not received EC minutes since March of 2003.

They also cite that the Executive body referred to by Singh is illegal since the term of directors on the committee is two years as provided for by Article 72 of the Articles. It is being suggested that this anomaly or breach has been propagated for over a year now. This would mean that all decisions taken by the WICB Executive for the past year are null and void, legal sources contend.

This performance is not something to be proud of and cannot be accepted as business as usual. The members of the WICB must without delay begin to examine new ways of conducting business and must now seriously get rid of the existing directors at the WICB. New faces, a competent structure managed by energetic, competent and new economy (not paraplegic) youth must be installed to govern West Indian cricket.

The struggle continues. The West Indies omelet is not complete, the eggs are still being broken.