When will the TTFA chaos end?

Be­ing Car­ni­val week I have al­ready planned the fetes I will at­tend: Machel Mon­day, Kes Tues­day, Bayview and then take it from there. I was even con­tem­plat­ing writ­ing about some of my ex­pe­ri­ences thus far for this long but en­joy­able Car­ni­val sea­son.

Sit­ting as usu­al with cof­fee in hand, wham! the Guardian head­line smashed me, “Awai: Look Loy’s TTFA ap­point­ment il­le­gal”. The au­thor was none oth­er than Michael Awai, the North East Stars Di­rec­tor of Foot­ball. He very ac­cu­rate­ly quot­ed parts of the con­sti­tu­tion and the min­utes of the re­con­vened T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) dat­ed De­cem­ber 23, 2017, at which Look Loy and Sam Phillips were ap­point­ed to the board.

But as far as he is con­cerned, both were il­le­gal­ly ap­point­ed as de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to ap­point­ments or dis­missals of of­fi­cers could not have been made ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cle 24, para­graph three (Quo­rum of the Gen­er­al Meet­ing) of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion.

Awai may or may not have sol­id ground to stand on and I am not go­ing to de­bate his po­si­tion. Phillips, the for­mer T&T Pro League chair­man, has tak­en grave of­fence and is de­mand­ing an apol­o­gy and went fur­ther to state that Awai is mis­lead­ing the pub­lic. Of course, in true "Tri­ni" style, the at­tack then be­came per­son­al as the words cho­sen by the North East Stars man has in­censed Phillips.

So why would Awai sud­den­ly take up this case? I didn’t have to wait long for the an­swer as my mo­bile phone start­ed ring­ing. ‘Town’ says that Awai is be­ing court­ed as one of the per­sons ear­marked to be a vice-pres­i­dent of the TTFA. ‘Town’ al­so went on to sug­gest that if Awai is so big on the con­sti­tu­tion, he should go back to the 2015 TTFA elec­tions as he is con­fus­ing an elec­tion with a con­fir­ma­tion. He should open the door again to ques­tion the le­git­i­ma­cy of the TTFA 2015 elec­tions as a ma­jor­i­ty of non-com­pli­ant mem­bers vot­ed. I was even sent a nine-page doc­u­ment on the TTFA elec­tions. Per­haps Awai should seek a copy and pe­ruse it.

My dear read­ers, quite frankly I am not in­ter­est­ed in the 2015 TTFA re­port­ed­ly far­ci­cal elec­tions but hope­ful­ly Awai could shed some light on it. What dis­turbs me is the con­tin­ued neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty that fol­lows the beau­ti­ful game un­der this regime since 2015. Two of the three vice pres­i­dents have re­signed; in one case the sec­ond vice pres­i­dent re­signed when it was re­port­ed that the pres­i­dent of the TTFA or­dered the gen­er­al sec­re­tary to with­hold in­for­ma­tion from the board on the res­ig­na­tion. This was ac­tu­al­ly ad­mit­ted by the gen­er­al sec­re­tary in the pub­lic do­main.

Soon af­ter, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, whom I have been ad­vised was do­ing a good job, was told to be­gin to seek em­ploy­ment else­where. The end came for him a cou­ple of days ago when there were 11 board mem­bers present for a re­con­vened board meet­ing; the se­cret bal­lot vote went five-for and five-against with one ab­sten­tion. Who had the cast­ing vote? Not hard to fig­ure out, right? So good­bye to Justin Lat­apy- George the for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA. Thanks for what you tried to do for foot­ball. What was rather pe­cu­liar about this vote was that it was done by se­cret bal­lot. I won­der why? Al­so not hard to fig­ure out, right?

In comes Ca­ma­ra David as the new gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA. I met David when he was the sec­re­tary of the T&T Su­per League (TTSL). He seemed very com­pe­tent at his job and was as­sured in all that he did. He was out­spo­ken with his views and my hope is that he hasn’t changed and does what is right for the good of T&T foot­ball and stands for his be­liefs be­cause he would have failed the pub­lic and clubs if he does not. He is the third gen­er­al sec­re­tary in this regime’s tenure.

I have nev­er seen so many changes in the TTFA be­fore a four-year term comes to an end. Poor Ol­lie (Oliv­er) Camps must be turn­ing in his grave; two vice pres­i­dents and three gen­er­al sec­re­taries makes you won­der from the out­side, what is wrong? These are high pro­file po­si­tions and I would have thought the foot­balling pub­lic would know why these changes have come about but this is not so. There are about nine months to go be­fore the TTFA have their elec­tions and it is go­ing to be very in­ter­est­ing if the two vice pres­i­dent po­si­tions are filled be­fore those elec­tions. Who will ap­point those po­si­tions and who will the names be? It will be riv­et­ing or should I say in­for­ma­tive?

While I sin­cere­ly ap­plaud the idea of the “Home of Foot­ball” (hope­ful­ly we will get some true dol­lar fig­ures even­tu­al­ly), I hold my head and bawl with the gov­er­nance of foot­ball in sweet T&T.

Have a great and safe Car­ni­val. It is ours and we are proud to say it is the great­est show on earth.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian