The rea­son why sport in T&T and the wider Caribbean con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant and in­tractable is­sues that neg­a­tive­ly im­pact cred­i­bil­i­ty, rep­u­ta­tion and good gov­er­nance, comes down to the choice be­tween du­plic­i­ty and in­tegri­ty.

Every sin­gle hu­man be­ing is faced on a dai­ly ba­sis with the temp­ta­tion to be du­plic­i­tous, in small things and big things. It’s a choice but the im­pact at a lead­er­ship and man­age­ment lev­el is dev­as­tat­ing, dele­te­ri­ous and de­bil­i­tat­ing. It has a long-term neg­a­tive im­pact.

In re­cent days with­in one of T&T’s ma­jor sports, al­le­ga­tions of some­one ad­mit­ting to ac­cept­ing an in­duce­ment to change their vote have sur­faced on so­cial me­dia. Just let that sink in. There are those who will say: “What’s the is­sue? That’s par for the course. Noth­ing new be­cause of the frail­ties of hu­man be­hav­iour and hu­man na­ture.”

Of­fer­ing an in­duce­ment and ac­cept­ing an in­duce­ment to change your vote is an act of du­plic­i­ty and de­cep­tion at best and cor­rup­tion at worst.

Peo­ple, who oth­er­wise will at­test to act­ing and be­liev­ing in in­tegri­ty, will sell their vote for an in­duce­ment. It could be the of­fer of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance or a promise to head a com­mit­tee or com­mis­sion. At the Con­ti­nen­tal and World lev­els, horse trad­ing is con­sid­ered strate­gic. The Caribbean has an un­for­tu­nate rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a low-hang­ing fruit. It’s per­ceived that it’s easy to di­vide the Caribbean and split the Caribbean votes. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for such du­plic­i­ty and de­cep­tion can be de­mor­al­is­ing. There are those who are quite con­tent­ed to sell their coun­try’s or or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vote.

The fact that sell­ing out is at the ex­pense of the greater good mat­ters not. It’s a chance at re­venge or to set­tle a per­son­al griev­ance or grudge. But then again it goes right back to the essence of colo­nial­ism and slav­ery. Who re­al­ly sold who and to whom? And who de­rived the most ben­e­fit?

Google du­plic­i­ty and many ar­ti­cles pop up that pro­vide in­ter­est­ing read­ing. There are dif­fer­ent opin­ions and con­cepts.

What is the dif­fer­ence be­tween du­plic­i­ty and de­cep­tion?

Ex­am­ples of an­swers on Google: De­cep­tion is de­ceit, fraud, fraud­u­lence, trick­ery, dou­ble-deal­ing or even treach­ery. Du­plic­i­ty has these facets built in, how­ev­er, it is achieved through avoid­ance of be­ing straight­for­ward; forth­right­ness or can­dour. That is to say, de­cep­tion is more vis­i­ble and du­plic­i­ty is usu­al­ly masked.

Both words mean de­cep­tive or dis­hon­est, but de­ceit­ful refers to some­one who in­ten­tion­al­ly mis­leads or lies to achieve their goals, while du­plic­i­tous refers to a per­son who is two-faced or hyp­o­crit­i­cal, say­ing one thing but do­ing an­oth­er.

There are man­agers who are es­sen­tial­ly cow­ards. They have no guts. No courage. These would al­ways be in­dulging in dou­ble speak. They would al­ways praise in their pres­ence and be loath­some­ly crit­i­cal be­hind the backs of their col­leagues.

In Chin­ua Achebe’s short sto­ry “The Vot­er”, the main char­ac­ter Ru­fus (Roof) solves his dilem­ma of sell­ing his vote by tear­ing his bal­lot pa­per in two and putting one half in each box. In “The Vot­er”, Achebe high­lights an elec­tion sys­tem that makes a mock­ery of democ­ra­cy and is based on buy­ing votes and mak­ing false promis­es.

Ac­cord­ing to David Froomk­ing and Robert Dahl at its best, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic com­pe­ti­tion in­sti­tu­tion­alis­es a “mar­ket­place of ideas,” en­cour­ag­ing can­di­dates for of­fice to make the strongest case for their pro­posed poli­cies in or­der to ral­ly sup­port.

Po­lit­i­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and those with re­sources to of­fer in­duce­ments dis­tort democ­ra­cy. But then again, Achebe’s The Vot­er sup­ports Wilde’s as­ser­tion that life im­i­tates art, far more than art im­i­tates life.