Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony is expected to meet today with the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) to discuss the absence of national chess champion Wendell Meusa from this year’s National Closed Chess Championships which started on Saturday at the Ocean Spray Hotel.
According to president of the GCF, Errol Tiwari, Meusa was banned for six months for making allegations against the GCF which the GCF claimed he was unable to prove and for being reluctant to apologise to the GCF.
The specific allegations made by Meusa are that the distribution of who plays with the black or white pieces during a game are not done in a fair manner; that some members smoke cigarettes and consume alcohol during tournaments and that the GCF has a tendency to abuse its power.
The GCF in a subsequent press release gave examples of two tournaments, the Trophy Stall seven round tournament in January of this year and the eight round Topco Juice Mashramani tournament in February of this year, which supported their contention that there was no bias in the allocation of who plays with the white or black pieces.
They did not give data for the other tournaments including last November’s National Closed Chess championships where Meusa dethroned Kriskal Persaud in a dominant performance winning the title with two rounds still to be contested.
The decision to prevent Meusa from defending his title can be viewed especially harsh since there were other steps that the GCF could have taken including a lighter sentence or even a fine or possibly postponing the tournament to give Meusa a chance to defend his title.
The GCF should also have questioned other chess players to determine whether there was any degree of truth in Meusa’s allegations.
This newspaper can recall an incident between veteran player Roy Sharma and the GCF president Tiwari where the match between the two players ended in a victory for Sharma.
Sharma was later informed by Tournament Director Irshad Mohammed that because he had played with the wrong colour, the match had to be replayed. He refused.
Sharma argued that according to FIDE rules once the match had been completed the result should stand and refused to take further part in the tournament. He has not played another tournament since.
Where Meusa erred was that he did not bring the issues of drinking or smoking to the attention of the Tournament Director when it was happening although one supposes that he has his reasons for not doing so.
Penalised for speaking out
As long as associations try to penalize athletes for speaking out in interviews in the media they will be seen as abusing the authority that they have.
In 1981 former three time national men’s singles table tennis champion Colin France was banned for one year for an article in the Guyana Chronicle headlined “France slams bullet headed bosses.”
France said he was accused of spreading incorrect information in the article. At the time France was in his prime having won the men’s singles title for three consecutive years.
He returned to the sport after the one-year ban but was never able to resume his dominance of the sport.
And, in another example where athletes have been penalized for speaking out, it was reported in Saturday’s Guyana Chronicle, that dynamic national striker Gregory `Jackie Chan’ Richardson must first apologise to the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) for an interview he gave to the media last year in order to resume playing for Guyana.
In Guyana it seems as if the sportsmen and women are so at the mercy of sports associations that they cannot even air their views. They are effectively gagged, prevented from exposing certain situations within associations.
Recently Dr. Anthony was forced to intervene in the affairs of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) following claims by a GCB official that acid was thrown on his face because he dared to question matters relating to the financial aspects of the GCB.
Dr. Anthony did manage to quell that particular insurrection which has divided the GCB.
Today, Dr. Anthony will be forced to examine another issue which is, whether athletes should face sanctions from associations for giving interviews that might be interpreted as putting associations in a bad light.
He might want to use as an example the tolerance shown by the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in the face of comments from its previous captain Chris Gayle as an example.
