Building new unions
by VANEISA BAKSHIt takes imagination to break away from old ways. Courage and conviction too. That is why change is never easy, because it means moving to new, sometimes untested grounds and that can be unsettling at best, threatening at worst.
The invitation to the president of the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) to join the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) as a non-member director has troubled some. There are those who question the prudence of having a body seen as a trade union for West Indian cricketers sitting on the Board that administers West Indies cricket. What freedom would the Board have to discuss issues relating to cricketers in such a presence?
The Board would first have to accept that West Indian cricketers are at the heart of West Indies cricket and have a right to be party to discussions affecting it. The Board would have to genuinely want to build the kind of partnerships that foster development that it has declared itself willing to do. It would mean casting out the demon of adversarial relations that has been its blight for so long that no one can imagine working together to achieve what ought to be a common goal.
The notion that WIPA will be obstructive comes from the history of those relations, which have not been pretty. That was a dysfunctional relationship built block by block with negative material. It didn’t turn ugly overnight, and it is certainly not going to blossom into the most beauteous thing at dawn either.
But just because it will be a slow process to create a harmonious environment is not a valid ground for exclusion. Because this particular relationship has been so fraught with confrontation, it is easy for people to zero in only on the parties involved and miss seeing the wider issue; which is, how are we going to rebuild West Indies cricket?
True, some of the contentious people ought to be removed because they will never be able to overcome the morass of their minds. I do not wish to single out specific persons, but would want to encourage careful thought on the way ahead, and not have us stuck on personality prickles. The point is that the personalities involved might not be appropriate for the tasks, but that does not mean that a different approach should be condemned.
The WICB itself must reflect on issues raised by its last president: that confidentiality had been consistently breached and that public trust was gone. That came from within the Board, which is not a harmonious entity, without help from WIPA. The WICB is not a body of gentle men; they dished it out as aggressively as WIPA's president, Dinanath Ramnarine. Indeed, Ken Gordon went so far as to say that in manner, CEO Bruce Aanensen and Ramnarine were the same. What's the difference then with Ramnarine on the Board and Aanensen? Anansen is paid by the Board to be its chief executive officer.
Ramnarine is there as a representative of the players, and that should not disqualify him from participating in general decisions. It would probably save a lot of time and argument if he could present players' positions at early enough stages and spare everyone the negotiating heat.
All directors come to that Board bearing their own agendas. All are there representing some body of interests. Who is to say that their interests are any more or less important than the ones being represented by Ramnarine?
There really is no value in hanging on to the irrelevant idea that trade unionists (as people insist on terming WIPA) cannot or ought not to participate. These are different times, and certainly the structure, administration and circumstance of West Indies cricket are more complex than usually obtains in regular corporate environments.
For its own good, it has to cut itself free from these old fetters and move ahead with intelligence and vision and not the cunning that defined it, destroyed its integrity and prevented it from doing the right thing for too long.