Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form is on the Agen­da of the Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASATT). At ASATT's An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in No­vem­ber 2021, the re-elect­ed ASATT Pres­i­dent Lind­say Gillette ac­knowl­edged the dis­con­tent and con­ster­na­tion by a seg­ment of the fra­ter­ni­ty to as­pects of our gov­er­nance and com­mit­ted in this term of of­fice to ad­dress con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

This has man­i­fest­ed in ac­tion by its in­clu­sion on the agen­da of the first coun­cil meet­ing of the Gillette-led ad­min­is­tra­tion. This is a wel­come ac­tion as the aquat­ic fra­ter­ni­ty needs to have a frame­work of gov­er­nance for its stake­hold­ers. Con­grat­u­la­tions to ASATT for ini­ti­at­ing this process and hopes more suc­cess comes from this than the three ef­forts pri­or from 2013 to 2021. The clar­i­on call for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form should not on­ly arise when ad­min­is­tra­tions take more than their one-year con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­it, but its re­view should be an agen­da item on a bi­en­ni­al to qua­dren­ni­al ba­sis.

The fol­low­ing iden­ti­fies three sug­gest­ed mat­ters that must be ad­dressed in the con­sti­tu­tion.

1. Term of Of­fice

Ar­ti­cle 10 of the ASATT Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides “The An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing shall be held in Sep­tem­ber in every year at such time and place as may be des­ig­nat­ed by the Coun­cil.”

An elec­tion of an ex­ec­u­tive every year has re­sult­ed in un­due con­flict as soon as the an­niver­sary of the elec­tion ar­rives and is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to con­ti­nu­ity and long-term plan­ning in ASATT. While it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al that every ad­min­is­tra­tion since 2010 has ex­ceed­ed the term lim­it, it is im­prac­ti­cal for the term to be any­thing less than two years. At the next elec­tion due this year, it is sug­gest­ed that the next term takes us to 2024 fol­low­ing the Olympics, and four-year terms there­after.

2. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of Board of Di­rec­tors

“Ar­ti­cle 6 of the ASATT Con­sti­tu­tion states “The af­fairs of the As­so­ci­a­tion shall be man­aged by Coun­cil. The Coun­cil shall con­sist of all elect­ed Of­fi­cers of the As­so­ci­a­tion and one (1) Del­e­gate nom­i­nat­ed in writ­ing by each Or­di­nary Mem­ber.”

The As­so­ci­a­tion has 25 or­di­nary mem­bers and eight of­fi­cers. The eight of­fi­cers are ca­su­al­ly called “the ex­ec­u­tive.” Yet, in re­al­i­ty, “the ex­ec­u­tive” has no col­lec­tive pow­er to make de­ci­sions on its own with­out the or­di­nary mem­bers. This has not stopped each “ex­ec­u­tive” from mak­ing de­ci­sions with­out the knowl­edge and bless­ing of the Or­di­nary Mem­bers.

It is un­rea­son­able for an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber to have as­signed du­ties with no pow­er to make de­ci­sions with­in a frame­work. It is al­so cum­ber­some for thir­ty-three per­sons in an As­so­ci­a­tion of a few hun­dred ath­letes to have a say on every de­ci­sion with­in the As­so­ci­a­tion. There needs to be a Board of Di­rec­tors who have de­fined pow­ers to make de­ci­sions in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly. The Coun­cil should make con­sti­tu­tion­al de­ci­sions or oth­er ma­te­r­i­al de­ci­sions. For ex­am­ple, the coun­cil could make de­ci­sions on fi­nan­cial mat­ters over a cer­tain thresh­old, or the Coun­cil may have to de­cide if Trinidad and To­ba­go is to host in­ter­na­tion­al games.

The Board of Di­rec­tors should con­tain an ar­ray of tal­ent that can de­vel­op all as­pects of aquat­ics. While the usu­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Fi­nance, Tech­ni­cal and Mar­ket­ing should have rep­re­sen­ta­tion, ath­lete rep­re­sen­ta­tion and de­vel­op­ment of oth­er aquat­ic sports should have a voice on the Board. We can­not con­tin­ue to ig­nore the de­vel­op­ment of div­ing and artis­tic swim­ming which fall un­der the purview of ASATT.

The Board is dri­ven by Com­mit­tees of qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als who come from groups such as par­ents, tech­ni­cal of­fi­cials, cur­rent and re­tired ath­letes and coach­es, club ad­min­is­tra­tors and sports man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als.

3. Fix­ing the Mem­ber­ship Dilem­ma

The Road March at ASATT Elec­tion Sea­son is “Ghost Clubs.” These are clubs that do not ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in any ASATT meets and events with their hi­ber­na­tion pe­ri­od be­ing from AGM to AGM. They have no reg­is­tered ath­letes for years on end and have not paid ath­lete reg­is­tra­tion fees for years.

No rea­son­able hu­man could agree that a club that has ze­ro swim­mers and has paid ze­ro ath­lete reg­is­tra­tion fees should have two votes, while a club with twen­ty paid ath­letes should have two votes. This is un­fair and il­log­i­cal. ASATT's con­sti­tu­tion states club must main­tain 10 Ac­tive Com­pet­i­tive Swim­mers. ASATT's peren­ni­al fail­ure to en­force not on­ly per­verts the elec­toral process but al­so re­sults in coun­cil meet­ings fre­quent­ly lack­ing a quo­rum which is 50% of the or­di­nary mem­bers and of­fi­cers. For ex­am­ple, if five of­fi­cers at­tend a meet­ing it means on­ly eleven of the twen­ty-five clubs need to at­tend for it to be quo­rate. These ghost clubs have no demon­strat­ed in­ter­est in aquat­ic sports.

The in­sti­tu­tion of the Board struc­ture as pre­vi­ous­ly il­lus­trat­ed will as­sist with min­imis­ing the wastage of time, gas and loss in­come cre­at­ed by abort­ed meet­ings. How­ev­er, the fail­ure to ad­dress the ghost clubs al­so af­fects the elec­toral process. A sug­ges­tion for im­ple­men­ta­tion is:

*Any club that has not par­tic­i­pat­ed in ASATT com­pe­ti­tions for the last five years is re­moved from the ASATT club reg­is­ter

*ASATT com­pe­ti­tions are de­vel­oped for all aquat­ic sports and Mas­ters ath­letes, so clubs would have a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to be con­sti­tu­tion­al

*Mem­ber­ship should be based on Com­pet­i­tive Ath­letes, not Swim­mers. This will en­sure a space for our oth­er aquat­ic sports

*ASATT should con­sid­er vot­ing rights on a tiered ba­sis rel­a­tive to the num­ber of ac­tive com­pet­i­tive ath­letes. For ex­am­ple:

*1 - 5 ath­letes*one vote

*6 - 20 ath­letes*two votes

*21 - 49 ath­letes*three votes

*Fifty plus*four votes

As an or­gan­i­sa­tion that en­forces rules on ath­letes, we should al­so have a ro­bust gov­er­nance frame­work that we en­force on our­selves. We can­not con­tin­ue to be com­fort­able with our com­pli­ance with un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. With FI­NA Olympic pro­gramme now hinged on our gov­er­nance, it is hoped that the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form process bears fruit to the ben­e­fit of all ath­letes and stake­hold­ers.