WHAT HAS now become the all too familiar display of grossly indisciplined behaviour on the part of persons who are responsible for the fashioning of the minds of the future generation has once again prevailed, despite those in authority attempting to inject some normalcy and decency into the otherwise excellent display of great feats of physical prowess by our young school athletes.

As reported in Kaieteur News under the headline: “South Georgetown protest stalls Schools Championships for hours”, the casualty of this dastardly act on the part of adults who were charged with organising the school championships were the splendid displays of courage, valiant conduct, endurance, and the indomitable spirit of our young sportsmen and women of tomorrow. Sport is a noble and disciplined undertaking, and for those in charge of the arrangement of the competition to have conducted themselves in this manner must quite rightly have left the attendees wondering whether in fact they were in a circus.

It would appear that the degenerate behaviour commenced with the action of one Selwyn Brown, a well-known gay activist, who led a set of children on to the field to protest the exclusion of a replacement for an injured athlete from his division. Eventually, my son Fiyad, who subsequently became the object of the protest, among other issues, was unceremoniously removed from participation in the competition without even an explanation being provided to me, the father. Despite also speaking to the editor of the Kaieteur News  concerning the circumstances surrounding the controversy of my son’s participation in the competition, nothing that I said to him – as has now become the norm for that paper to be biased and controversial – was given any reference whatsoever.   

I would therefore like for you, Mr Editor, to carry my side of the story, so that the public can judge for themselves and come to their own conclusion on the matter, and not be subject to the lopsided and wholly “justified behaviour” being reported by the Kaieteur News.
Let me commence by stating that my son had qualified for participation in the national competition, a fact that is not contested by Mr Sean Bristol, the Committee Director, and his assistant, Mr Duke, both of whom I spoke to on the evening of closure of the events. This is as a result of my son participating in both the inter-house and the inter-school championships, the latter event at which he was a winner of the 1500-metre race.

What would appear to be a gross concoction, although given credence by the Kaieteur News reporting on the matter, is that my son produced his birth certificate during the competition. Rather, weeks before the championships were held, and most certainly before being called to attend camp for a week at the North Georgetown Multilateral School, since Monday, 14th November, the birth certificate of my son was submitted.  This fact can be attested to by the officials of the Ministry of Education, and more particularly by one Mr Nicholas Fraser, who made the necessary arrangements on behalf of Mr Neil Kumar, National Sports Director, for the birth certificate to be submitted to the organising committee just a few days after one of their officials had visited the school my child attends to provide the participating athletes of that school with their letters of acceptance. My son Fiyad’s letter was subsequently provided to him, and is attached as evidence. I specifically referred to this fact when I spoke with Mr Adam Harris, so that I can have this wholly discriminatory and, in my view, racist conduct of the committee’s eventual action in excluding my son from participating exposed.

It is very mystifying to me that although my son was called to camp since the start of the events on Monday, the relevant officials did not realise that my son was not on the list of athletes from the very inception. When this was brought to the attention of a very senior government official, no other than the honourable Minister of Education, as I had previously tried unsuccessfully to have the Head of the Teachers’ Union, Mr Colin Bynoe, intervene to correct this anomaly, I was subsequently informed that a special meeting was requested to consider the omission, thereupon a decision was taken to correct the omission.

It has now transpired, from what was said to me by a number of officials of the organising committee, including the director, that the manner in which the Committee alleged they were instructed to include my son on the list angered them, since, according to them, veiled threats were issued if they had chosen to do otherwise. What therefore appeared to have transpired reveals quite a lot about the depths of insanity and depravity to which persons are prepared to stoop in order to carry out their acts of malice and revenge just to satisfy their own personal self-interest and to have disregarded the previous decision taken at the behest of the minister.  This pertinent fact was not brought to light by the Kaieteur News reporter.  This is not surprising, as once the real motive was revealed by the investigation conducted by the newspaper, it would have suffered the same fate that my son suffered at the hands of these depraved, sinister and puerile minds of the members of the committee, who took the position that my son could not qualify to run in the event because his birth certificate was not provided at the time requested.

I ask those officials who had their way, or so it seems, of ruining the spirit of my son, and I might venture so far as to say may have permanently created distrust in him for public officials who are charged with organising such events, are they proud of themselves to have used their positions to achieve their selfish, narrow agenda? At the end of the day, it was supposed to be the participants’ feats of accomplishment in the various sporting events that should have been on display and permanently etched in the minds of those taking part either as participants or spectators, not this rancorous, crass vulgarity of a few officials who eventually hijacked and caused their own narrow selfish agenda to prevail. Sports, throughout the history of our country, has served  as a uniting catalyst bridging the divide of not only our culture, but our races; and for our officials to have displayed such a high propensity to be divisive and stir up racial sentiments  shows that they are totally unfit to be organisers of such a noble aspiration.