Time for a national dialogue on sport

The recent announcement of a new initiative on the part of the government dubbed, Pan Against Crime” literally sent shivers down the spine and this if only because it reflects the utter ignorance of the current political administration in respect of the power of sport as a vehicle for national development and a critical component of any genuine community development thrust.
The same analysis can be made of the decision of the authorities to speak of a “Wellness revolution” instead of revolutionizing sport.
What we have been fed in the two aforementioned instances is a fair amount of political diatribe and the ones at the helm seem oblivious to their own misunderstanding of the power of sport.
One need only return to the thronging masses in attendance at the recent game between Guyana and St Vincent and the Grenadines at the Victoria Park to glean a better understanding of the point being made here.
What we have unfortunately is a series of initiatives that emerge from some important personalities in the government without any genuine understanding of the social matrix that is our society today.
It is also most unfortunate that the leaders of sport in Vincentian society appear unwilling to rock the political boat for fear of recrimination of one sort or another.
There is no single component of national life that brings people of all walks of life together like sport and therefore it should be one of the primary platforms developed as an alternative to a life of crime.
Who’s in charge?
There is little doubt that as it currently stands the National Sports Council (NSC) is a lost cause. It has been overlooked, for the most part, by the authorities when authority was vested in a Local organizing Committee for four of the NSC’s major sporting facilities. In essence the NSC by dint of political fiat was rendered a toothless tiger left to merely observe the machinations of an LOC that itself did not know what it was about.