Dear Editor,
Success, as the saying goes, breeds, its own enemies. Mark Arthur’s letter captioned “Kashif and Shanghai should provide full accounts” published in the Sports section of the Stabroek News of Saturday October 6th 2007, certainly bears out that saying.
Mr Arthur accuses the Kashif and Shanghai Organisation of “crying foul,” and “whipping up a public relations campaign against VAT, the GFF and the government of Guyana,” accusations which, given their seriousness, he ought not to have been allowed to make in the media without a shred of supporting evidence.
His assertions about the sponsorship and accounting arrangements that attend the tournament are crafted around a preoccupation with simply “mouthing off” the Kashif and Shanghai Organization while the same ill-informed perspective attends his assertion that “everything is sponsored” and about the role of Mr. Austin “Jack” Warner in the tournament.
“What have they (the Kashif and Shanghai Organization) done for football?” A full response to that question, Mr. Arthur, requires more space than the newspaper would allow. Indeed, that question is best posed to the thousands of fans across Guyana that have been entertained by the event over the past seventeen years; the clubs and players who have had an opportunity to participate in a professionally organized tournament; the government of Guyana and the private sector sponsors that have entrusted us with their brands and their reputations over the years; the teams from the Caribbean and the United States that have had the opportunity of competing in Guyana ; the Guyana Football Federation which has secured valuable revenue through levy fees; the teams from remote areas of Guyana that were afforded what for them were unprecedented opportunities to compete against teams from the coastal areas of Guyana and the support team that helped to organize the tournament each year.
You may also wish, Mr. Arthur, to pose the same question to the people of the Linden community for whom the Annual Kashif and Shanghai Tournament was far more than a mere sporting event. That should give Mr. Arthur plenty to do in the weeks ahead while the Kashif and Shanghai Organization is left alone to seek to continue what, by any stretch of the imagination, is a fine tradition.
Yours faithfully,
Kashif Mohammed
Director
Kashif and Shanghai Organisation
