T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis is pleased by the move of the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion (CGF) in giv­ing ath­letes the free­dom to protest on the podi­um at this year's event to be held in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land.

on Wednes­day, the CGF's Ath­letes Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mis­sion (AAC), chaired by for­mer high jumper Bren­dan Williams of Do­mini­ca, re­leased a nine-page doc­u­ment, pro­vid­ing guide­lines al­low­ing ath­letes to ex­press theme­selves.

"I think it was an im­por­tant first step from the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion,"  said Lewis, who has been an ad­vo­cate of ath­letes hav­ing the right to free­dom of opin­ion and ex­pres­sion.

"Cred­it to Bren­dan Williams whose lead­er­ship in terms of this par­tic­u­lar is­sue is very in­stru­men­tal and in­flu­en­tial. In fact, what the CGF had done in ad­di­tion to its' ath­lete ad­vi­so­ry com­mis­sion chaired by Bren­don Williams and com­pris­ing of ath­letes is that it in­clud­ed what they called an in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert work­ing group of which I had the priv­i­lege and op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of that in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert work­ing group that worked along with the ath­lete ad­vi­so­ry com­mis­sion in cre­at­ing this doc­u­ment.

"There was a lot of work and ro­bust dis­cus­sions and con­ver­sa­tion and cred­it must be giv­en to a very in­clu­sive and di­verse group of in­di­vid­u­als and of course the Com­mon­wealth Games sports move­ment who would have con­tributed to this doc­u­ment."

The move by the CGF means that ath­letes com­pet­ing at this year's Com­mon­wealth Games will be al­lowed, for ex­am­ple, to raise a fist on the podi­um to protest in favour of racial equal­i­ty.

Williams in his in­tro­duc­tion to the doc­u­ment, stat­ed: "A pri­or­i­ty for me as the CGF AAC Chair is en­sur­ing that every sin­gle ath­lete, in every sin­gle na­tion and ter­ri­to­ry, has a voice and a plat­form to be heard."

He added: "It is im­por­tant for every Com­mon­wealth ath­lete to know what that means and what that looks like, par­tic­u­lar­ly at our flag­ship event; the Com­mon­wealth Games.

"That is why I am proud that, af­ter much work and con­sul­ta­tion, we have cre­at­ed three Ath­lete Ad­vo­ca­cy Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples to sup­port our ath­letes.

"This work has been de­vel­oped by and for ath­letes, but it ap­plies to all par­tic­i­pants who may wish to make pos­i­tive ex­pres­sions of their val­ues in ac­cor­dance with these Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples.

"Aligned with the prin­ci­ples of the Com­mon­wealth Char­ter, these fo­cus on free­dom of ex­pres­sion and pos­i­tive ac­tion.

"This is not a protest pol­i­cy, rather prin­ci­ples that en­cour­age tol­er­ance, re­spect and un­der­stand­ing."

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment any such pos­i­tive ex­pres­sions of val­ues are sub­ject to the CGF "Char­ter of Good Con­duct".

The guid­ing prin­ci­ples are: 1 The CGF recog­nis­es that ath­letes are: in­spi­ra­tional lead­ers, agents of change, ad­vo­cates for in­tegri­ty, am­bas­sadors for re­spect, im­par­tial­i­ty and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion; 2 The CGF is sup­port­ive of free­dom of ex­pres­sion and trusts, re­spects and un­der­stands that ath­letes may want to make pos­i­tive ex­pres­sions of their val­ues in line with the CGF val­ues of Hu­man­i­ty, Equal­i­ty and Des­tiny; 3 Al­low­ing ath­letes so in at Games Ad­vo­cate for against so­cial in­jus­tice.

Lewis said: "Even though the Com­mon­wealth Games ath­letes' ad­vo­ca­cy work­ing group had come for­ward and cre­at­ed a doc­u­ment, which still re­quired Bren­dan Williams as the chair of the ath­letes' ad­vi­so­ry com­mis­sion to take it to the CGF ex­ec­u­tive board led by pres­i­dent Louise Mar­tin and they had to be con­vinced to ap­prove it, so all-round it has to be ac­knowl­edged that this is brave and coura­geous stuff tak­en by the CGF.

"At least from the CGF's per­spec­tive, this is ath­lete-led ath­lete-cen­tred and ath­lete-dri­ven. Where­as, in the con­text of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC), it is still very much led by IOC pres­i­dent Thomas Bach and his ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and then they are get­ting the sup­port of the ath­lete com­mis­sion but it is ques­tion­able from the Olympic Com­mit­tee IOC per­spec­tive."

For Lewis, the task will be how to move from the writ­ten doc­u­ment to the im­ple­men­ta­tion in a way that is mean­ing­ful and in a way, that em­braces all the stake­hold­ers.

"Of course, this is so sig­nif­i­cant and game-chang­ing as ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Bren­dan Williams, the chair that I for one, don't an­tic­i­pate an easy tran­si­tion," he said

"Not every­one is go­ing to be hap­py but at the end of the day, it is im­per­a­tive and that CGF giv­en its his­tor­i­cal re­al­i­ties and an­tecedents, it is land­mark that the CGF has tak­en this brave and bold step."