Rawle Welch must identify his challenger to Yassin

Sep 12, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Rawle Welch’s KN report ‘Time for change at GOA (Guyana Olympic Association)’ dated Sept.5, caught my attention and with your permission, I will pen an independent correspondence with absolutely no affiliation to the GOA or any other government office. I will state for the record that the GOA in 2015 extended a plaque to me for my independent photographic coverages over the years for sports development of/in Guyana. I have never met Mr. K.J. Yassin in person, never spoke to him directly. I didn’t attend the awards ceremony due to other commitments and only a couple of weeks ago I found out he has a FB account and I sent a request to be included on his contact list which he responded in the affirmative…
I respect R. Welch’s viewpoints but Guyana’s failure to medal at the just concluded Rio 2016 Olympic Games is no fault of the GOA…The world knows that it’s lack of preparation, major funding for the sports sector in Guyana and Guyana’s best qualification (I think) was a ‘B’ standard time by the 400m athlete. Did we expect to qualify for the finals at the Olympic Games with a ‘B’ standard timing? This is with the exception of overseas based Guyanese, Troy Doris.
Isn’t it common sense that if no one challenges the current President of any sports fraternity that the individual remains the President or re-elected? Can R. Welch say for the public’s consumption who is the person in question he has in mind to head the GOA, challenge the current President and take sports to the elite level?
Respectfully Mr. R.Welch, the current President of the GOA is the only person to date to publicly announce via the press that his office’s annual financial audit reports are up to date.No one else to date has made such an announcement from any other sports fraternity in/of Guyana since he made that announcement. I also hope he continues to have the records in tact since that publication.
Perhaps you and other journalists can consider embarking on some investigative journalism on updated financial record keeping with every other sports fraternity that exists in Guyana…That would be of great interest for me with the results. Perhaps a start should be with the Guyana Teacher’s Union who I understand rakes in millions of dollars annually and we hardly ever hear from them about their input with sports development after the annual National School Championships ends…I never forgot the Amerindian/Indigenous athlete “WILSON GIRL’ from Lethem who created a storm when she ran bare feet and killed her competition…They had plans for her but after she was posted back to her home village, the plans died for her.
T. Pemberton