The presidents of the country’s two most active basketball associations Trevor Rose and Abdullah ‘Zico’ Hamid yesterday told Stabroek Sport that it was time that the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) holds elections.
Since the passing earlier this year of former president Godwin McPherson, who had been at the helm of the sport since 1991, vice president David Patterson took over.
The heads of the two associations said that he had promised to have elections in November but to date, there has been no elections.
According to Rose, the executive of the Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) met with the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA) president Hamid and a few of his executives and drafted a plan to have the federation hold its elections soon.
The GABA boss said that they are not going to “go with an iron fist to the federation, its process and its due process. Since the last meeting we had with the associations and the sports ministry earlier this year, we haven’t heard anything from the federation.”
Rose said they had planned to host an Inter-Sub Association competition before the elections
which should have been in November but to date nothing has materialized.
He added that the federation needs to be more proactive towards basketball and said their laid back attitude and silence of the past few months will hinder the development process of both associations as well as Berbice where they are trying to revamp their association.
“For us to work together as associations we must consult with a parent body which is the GABF and if the GABF is not active, well then we are going to be affected. There are things that we are planning that need the federation’s input but who to forward it too. The federation doesn’t have an office so how do we find the acting president, we know he has a business but he is never there,” Rose lamented.
Hamid who is new in the seat of president of the LABA also believes that with the federation being inactive, there is only so much they can do at an association level to help the game of basketball.
“They are many things we as an association would like to do and because there is no proper federation in place, we can’t do it really. At certain levels like the CBC and FIFA they deal directly with the federation and they are plenty courses and referees seminar and other stuff that are available but we can’t meet them because there’s no federation,” Hamid said.
However, Hamid blamed the associations for the state of which the game is in at present, stating that the federation is actually the associations and that a weak association is a weak federation.
“Seriously, this is happening because of the associations we had recently. You see we are actually the federation so if we had two associations who were just making a mess of the game no wonder we are in this mess we’re in right now. This is making it very hard on the two of us now who really want to see the game move forward,” said the former national player cum LABA president.
At present, the two parties are in the process of seeking suitable persons who they feel could be the saviour of the dying game.
