Bri­an Lewis

His­to­ry has a far reach­ing im­pact. It touch­es the wel­fare and pros­per­i­ty of us all, not on­ly in this gen­er­a­tion but far in­to the fu­ture. His­to­ry may well point the way and ex­plain why those who can make a dif­fer­ence pre­fer to ig­nore the na­tion's ath­letes and the ex­tent of the dis­re­gard they face. Our re­fusal or maybe it is fear of fac­ing up to the prob­lem will not make it go away. In fact it makes the sit­u­a­tion worse.

Dis­re­gard­ing the plight of our ath­letes add to the so­cial in­equal­i­ty, dys­func­tion, and grow­ing dis­af­fec­tion. Fun­da­men­tal truth in­forms the stub­born ques­tion– why?

The sta­tus quo would wish to dis­tort the ir­refutable truths com­fort­ably ped­dling de­nial and dis­tor­tions and a par­a­digm built on cen­turies of west­ern cul­ture, so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­struct. The lega­cy of the plan­ta­tion econ­o­my is in­tact and re­mains a strong el­e­ment in T&T's 21st cen­tu­ry nar­ra­tive.

To un­der­stand the so­ci­etal and eco­nom­ic un­der­cur­rents that cre­ate sub­con­scious bar­ri­ers, a rec­om­mend­ed start­ing place for sport lead­ers would be 'The­o­ry of the Plan­ta­tion Econ­o­my' by Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt and CLR James' 'Be­yond the Bound­ary'.

Not to be left out of the read­ing list would be books, es­says and ar­ti­cles by Er­ic Williams, Lloyd Best, De­nis Pan­tin, Arthur Lewis, Nor­man Gir­van, Er­ic St Cyr and George Beck­ford to name a few. There are prac­ti­cal re­al­i­ties and heart­break­ing sto­ries con­cern­ing ath­letes in T&T.

Our vul­ner­a­ble ath­letes–sports­men and women need more than pity. Pity will not solve their prob­lem or make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. Pri­or­i­ty must be placed on the wel­fare of our ath­letes. T&T is a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point for drugs, the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of peo­ple, mon­ey laun­der­ing and fi­nan­cial crimes, fu­elled by cor­rup­tion and il­le­gal gam­bling.

Drugs present a re­al dan­ger to our coun­try and so­ci­ety–sport like the rest of so­ci­ety is in dan­ger and not im­mune to the desta­bil­is­ing ef­fect. Oth­er is­sues im­pact­ing ath­letes are LGBT is­sues, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence/gen­der is­sues. Good gov­er­nance and na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tion strength­en is­sues. There are re­ports that ath­letes have suf­fered at the hands of re-tool­ing with­in the pub­lic sec­tor.

Re-tool­ing seems to be the buzz­word and/or code in cer­tain sec­tions of the pub­lic sec­tor. It is per­ceived to be a eu­phemism. What is the truth and what is mere fic­tion is best left to those with ev­i­dence that can stand le­gal scruti­ny. Those who are pur­su­ing the re-tool­ing agen­da need to be mind­ful that they are em­bed­ding the seeds of hate and anger. The re­tool­ing pro­po­nents have hard­ened their hearts, plugged their ears and shut their eyes.

That way they will not see with their eyes nor hear with their ears nor un­der­stand with their hearts the dark de­spair and an­guish caused by their re-tool­ing. There are di­verse rea­sons why the is­sues and chal­lenges fac­ing ath­letes in this coun­try do not re­ceive the se­ri­ous and ur­gent at­ten­tion re­quired. No mat­ter the strength of views and feel­ing about the top­ic. We must not con­tin­ue to sweep the prob­lem un­der the car­pet.

What­ev­er the per­cep­tion, the same prob­lems our ath­letes are fac­ing will be spo­ken by oth­ers in var­i­ous sec­tions of our so­ci­ety. Ig­nor­ing or triv­i­al­is­ing the is­sues will not make them go away. There are so­cial chal­lenges fac­ing T&T and our will­ing­ness to di­a­logue and ac­knowl­edge them will de­ter­mine in many sig­nif­i­cant ways what type of fu­ture our chil­dren, youths and young peo­ple will face.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a bet­ter life is not for some at the ex­pense of oth­ers. Bri­an Lewis is pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the TTOC.