Bri­an Lewis

The de­c­la­ra­tion of true faith and al­le­giance to the greater good and the best in­ter­est of sport on the twin Is­land Re­pub­lic is made by every­one ac­tive­ly in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tion and lead­er­ship of sport.

It is the very same de­c­la­ra­tion law abid­ing cit­i­zens make to this our na­tive land–Is­lands of the blue Caribbean Sea that we pledge our lives to serve.

What there­fore has gone wrong or where have we gone wrong?

Is it ac­cept­able for the sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to close their eyes, heart and minds to the re­al­i­ty that the in­tegri­ty of sport must be de­fend­ed fear­less­ly with­out com­pro­mise or sur­ren­der?

To cow­er out of fear is to im­pose a ter­ri­ble in­jus­tice not on­ly the con­cept of fair­play and sports­man­ship but more im­por­tant­ly to the young peo­ple of this na­tion.

We can plan and talk about pol­i­cy, pro­grammes and who don't know what they do­ing and who don't have what is re­quired to ad­min­is­trate, lead and man­age sport from now till thine king­dom come. But in the ab­sence of in­tegri­ty, hon­esty, ethics, trans­paren­cy, eq­ui­ty and a com­mit­ment to do right. All fall down.

It makes lit­tle sense. Call it the frame­work, the eco sys­tem, the ar­chi­tec­ture or in­fra­struc­ture. What­ev­er, it's noth­ing but emp­ty rhetoric and self-serv­ing si­lo and em­pire build­ing if the cre­ation in what­ev­er in­car­na­tion is de­void of in­tegri­ty, hon­esty, ethics and eq­ui­ty.

There is nei­ther ex­cuse nor jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for tol­er­at­ing and ac­cept­ing wrong do­ing.

Sport in T&T will not sus­tain­ably de­vel­op, achieve and main­tain its full po­ten­tial in the ab­sence of an un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to up­hold the in­tegri­ty of sport and sport's in­tegri­ty.

Those who turn a blind eye are as cul­pa­ble as those who are more than will­ing and com­fort­able to do what is wrong. There is no con­ve­nient ex­pla­na­tion that is ac­cept­able or tol­er­a­ble.

Sport on the twin Is­land Re­pub­lic and the in­tegri­ty of sport must not be com­pro­mised by those who seek to ex­tra rent from the sys­tem.

The val­ues of sport must not be bartered for a bag of sil­ver.

When un­eth­i­cal and cor­rupt acts are con­doned it's the young peo­ple who de­rive ben­e­fit from par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport who are the re­al vic­tims.

It is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble in a small Is­land state com­prised of just over 1.3 mil­lion in­hab­i­tants with 600 bil­lion and count­ing T&T Dol­lars hav­ing passed through the econ­o­my that there are still cries that mon­ey is a prob­lem.

The arith­metic doesn't add up.

That's a rough nap­kin cal­cu­la­tion go­ing back over the last decade. Bil­lions!

But for all our grumpi­ness, the cit­i­zens of T&T are in many ways far bet­ter off than many around the globe.

Cit­i­zens of T&T con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from sub­si­dies in ed­u­ca­tion, elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, trans­porta­tion, hous­ing etc. We are in­deed blessed to live in T&T.

That re­al­i­ty how­ev­er can't mean that we must turn a blind eye to wrong do­ing.

If bet­ter can be done then we should de­mand that bet­ter be done.

There must be an in­ten­si­fied, sus­tained and fear­less de­mand for the high­est stan­dard of ethics and in­tegri­ty and a re­source al­lo­ca­tion sys­tem that has as its man­date serv­ing rather than rul­ing.

The in­tegri­ty of sport and sport's in­tegri­ty, its trust­wor­thi­ness and po­ten­tial to make a sig­nif­i­cant and con­struc­tive dif­fer­ence are non-ne­go­tiable.

Cre­at­ing an eth­i­cal, non- cor­rupt sport en­vi­ron­ment, strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and gov­er­nance prac­tices will take not on­ly con­sci­en­tious­ness, ac­tivism and care­ful thought but un­re­strained courage.

Sport mat­ters. The in­tegri­ty of sport mat­ters.

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC). The TTOC al­so acts as the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­GA). The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC or TTC­GA.