The sys­temic rot that makes a so­ci­ety cor­rupt may not be ap­par­ent if we fo­cus on the de­viant be­hav­iour of a few in­di­vid­u­als are —Sud­hir Chel­la Ryan.

High crimes and ca­bals is the ti­tle of an es­say writ­ten by Sud­hir Chel­la Ryan and edit­ed by Sam Dress­er.

The writer made some salient points about what he termed grand cor­rup­tion as a sys­temic par­a­site on so­ci­ety. These in­clude: The ob­ser­va­tion that while the of­fi­cial de­f­i­n­i­tion of cor­rup­tion is the abuse of pub­lic of­fice for pri­vate gain the de­f­i­n­i­tion does lit­tle to cap­ture the re­al­i­ty. The writer al­so used terms such as ‘pow­er elite net­works, ca­bals and car­tels of spe­cial mon­eyed in­ter­ests to high­light the strate­gies used to de­form Gov­ern­ment pro­grammes and di­vert mon­ey while be­tray­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Ac­cord­ing to Ryan: cor­rup­tion can be clas­si­fied in three ways—pet­ty cor­rup­tion, ad­min­is­tra­tive cor­rup­tion and grand cor­rup­tion. He fur­ther said that grand cor­rup­tion isn’t on­ly lim­it­ed to the gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic sec­tor. Ref­er­ence was made to wealthy pat­ri­mo­ni­al sports or­gan­i­sa­tions such as FI­FA where there have been al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing mas­sive amounts of mon­ey.

The net­works are - so­cial struc­tures of pa­tron­age. Large and pow­er­ful mod­ern ca­bals where es­tab­lished pat­terns of mu­tu­al favours and oblig­a­tions con­tin­ue to be dom­i­nant at the ex­pense of fair­ness and equal treat­ment.

Sport be­ing a mi­cro­cosm of wider so­ci­ety, the de­base­ment of sport mir­rors the de­base­ment of so­ci­ety. Clien­telism, preda­to­ry cap­i­tal­ism, crony­ism, nepo­tism and preben­dal­ism pre­vail.

The pro­tec­tion rack­et en­sures those who are per­ceived as not part of the net­work, clique or ca­bal are kept in their right­ful place. If the prin­ci­pals and agents of the net­work and ca­bals can’t fig­ure you out or read you. Then you can’t be trust­ed. Mind you all of this is done un­der the guise of democ­ra­cy and good gov­er­nance. It’s sub­tle and per­sis­tent the elite net­work rule.

The role of his­to­ry and en­trenched arrange­ments of pow­er are in­sid­i­ous. Sacro­sanct is the main­te­nance of in­ter­lock­ing re­la­tion­ships that have in­sti­tu­tion­alised pa­tron­age and ex­change of favours. In­sti­tu­tion­al in­er­tia isn’t an ac­ci­dent - it is an in­ten­tion­al strat­e­gy that works to the ad­van­tage of the elite net­work and ca­bals.

The im­pact of the elite net­work and its lega­cies have al­ready run for a life­time. In the con­tem­po­rary world when the net­work as­serts its au­thor­i­ty and pow­er some call it neo­colo­nial­ism or neopat­ri­mo­ni­al­ism. But the days of the Ca­bals and elite net­work as we know, ex­pe­ri­ence and are held en­thralled by it may be com­ing to an end. The re­al­i­ty of the mod­ern world de­fies old-world struc­tures, tra­di­tion and modus operan­di.

The youth who can and want to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence aren’t go­ing to al­low them­selves to be ‘owned’ by the net­work. They don’t iden­ti­fy their tal­ent by their na­tion­al­i­ty they iden­ti­fy them­selves by tal­ent. With the right skills, to­day’s young tal­ent can move any­where they want. Hus­tling is life- and you can’t hus­tle stand­ing still.

In the age of dig­i­tal—files aren’t stored in cab­i­nets but in the cloud, pay­ments aren’t made by cheque but by apps, and doc­u­ments aren’t signed by ink but by dig­i­tal. Meet­ings and con­fer­ences are held by Zoom, Blue Jeans and Mi­crosoft. We live in the era of cloud lifestyle, dig­i­tal no­mads and blockchain pro­to­cols. Cor­rupt Ca­bals and en­trenched pow­er cen­tres for cen­turies have treat­ed ‘oth­ers’ as dis­pens­able and ex­pend­able tools and means to an end. They don’t treat oth­ers as their most pre­cious re­source. In the decades ahead sports or­gan­i­sa­tions es­pe­cial­ly those in small vul­ner­a­ble economies will have to rein­vent them­selves to es­cape the aque­duct of the elite net­work and ca­bals.

I close by recog­nis­ing that one year ago - to­day- De­on Lendore—one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bright­est and best tal­ent left us. De­on is gone but not for­got­ten and re­mains a source of in­spi­ra­tion and mo­ti­va­tion to his fam­i­ly, friends, peers and team­mates.