“The annual general meeting, of which at least four weeks prior notice shall be given, will be held not later than March each year.” – Constitution (Rules) of the Guyana Chess Federation, as approved at a general meeting on March 26, 1972
March has ended. For the second year in a row, Guyana is without a constituted body in chess. When the rules were established in 1972, and amended on March 30, 1975, they stated unambiguously, “The constituted body shall now be called the Guyana Chess Federation.” If there is no constituted body, there can be no Federation. In 1972 when the rules were devised, the entity for chess was known as the Guyana Chess Association. In 1975, the constitution was amended to read the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF). The name has remained to this day.
The failure of the body to hold its annual general meeting, at which members of the executive committee are elected, for two years, is disappointing, to put it mildly and kindly. Naturally, the Federation was not in a position to submit its proposed programmes to the National Sports Commission, which included its financial statements and international budgetary activities. Naturally, chess was excluded from the 2016 budgetary allocations which were