CONCACAF is voting again. Chuck Blazer, a US citizen, is stepping down to be succeeded by Sunil Gulati, a US citizen, who will be promoted to FIFA’s Executive Committee. Meanwhile, the tiniest of Caribbean islands that make up the majority of the CFU, are following orders as usual. This time, not those of the much maligned Jack Warner, but those of a dubious and FIFA-reprimanded figure, Gordon Derrick, victorious in a somewhat weird election to the helm of the CFU in Budapest last year (held in parallel to the FIFA Congress), and still, the General Secretary of his own Antiguan federation – but possibly not for much longer.
Because now, the Antiguan FA has to vote again, after FIFA ruled that the last election of its GenSec was more than flawed. Derrick, at first, opposed this, but must of course obey. In case he loses the real election (IF there is one that is acceptable), he won’t have a function within his own football association any longer. And if that awfulness ever were to happen, and if CONCACAF agrees to a set of new statutes at its next congress, the goodly man would no longer qualify to be CFU President, with which a new round of electioneering would have to start, and maybe somebody who did not accept a brown envelope a while back in Trinidad’s Grand Hyatt Hotel from whoever, will then have a chance to be elected CFU President the next time around. Phew! Many “ifs” and “whens”, admittedly.
Yet, maybe a new CFU President will not send out a letter weeks before the election of a CONCACAF delegate to FIFA’s ExCo, directly promoting the US candidate (while not even mentioning the opponent), as Derrick did (we have a copy). A new president would possibly have remembered that there actually was a Mexican candidate too, who, somehow, was completely “forgotten” by those tiny little island states that make up the Caribbean voting block, the C(aribbean) F(ootball) U(nion), CFU.
It may also be that pigs will fly. One never knows, does one? And it can also be that one candidate or the other will visit one president or the other and offer him/her yet another deal. Maybe not some pitches and a woman’s technical programme/centre that we hear about in Antigua at present, but a lovely Swiss watch or a gold coin or, or, or…
One wonders and the mind boggles. The Caribbean is one special place, no doubt. Elections resemble a Mid Eastern bazaar sometimes, and the war for turfs and spoils is apparently never-ending. The Caribbean, with all its beauty, remains a place of astonishing splendour and atrocious make-believe.
With Jack Warner gone, only idiots and self-appointed European and US moralists thought that everything would instantly change, while hardly anything has. Jeff Webb, CONCACAF’s Budapest-elected new President, has a battle to fight that he must still win, before any sort of normalcy can reign. But then again, what normalcy? Our double-standards, Euro-style, or a progressive evolution Caribbean style? Let us hope for the latter.
People conveniently forget that any bribe requires the participation of two parties: the one who offers and the one who takes. With ferociously destroying Jack Warner’s name, some truly dim-witted observers who neither live in the Caribbean nor have a clue about its people, proclaimed victory by good over evil and completely forgot that Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid (also called “the Hierarchy of Needs”) looks like this:
And is not limited to this:
Self-actualization is not possible without the hierarchic preconditions being met. Physiological needs (red), safety requirements (green), love and a sense of belonging (light blue) and self-esteem (green) are the conditions that must be met before us humans can proceed to the highest levels, namely a ready understanding and preparedness to seek a life of morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and the acceptance of facts.
In the very last – highest – instance only, can we add the dark blue ring to the equation: leisure. And isn’t football exactly that?
Only once we understand the Caribbean reality (which cannot be understood with a post-colonial mindset that more often than not equates with condescending arrogance), and once we are prepared to accept that 9.9 out of 10 island states are caught at the bottom of the pyramid (where we, the hypocritically exploitation-minded West continues to keep them with intent and disrespect) will those who appear easy to influence and control ever be given the opportunity to formulate their own ideas, needs and requirements and do something about it by themselves.
It is so very easy and cheap to damn the men and women who would accept a bribe. But it is much more disgusting, foul and despicable to seek an advantage by offering one. This always debases the target, assumes that he or she is less worth than we are and puts much more to shame those who offer, and not those who are exploited by the pittance of a cheap bribe. A little bit to us can mean a huge amount to others.
Maybe it might be useful to start thinking about ourselves, who have bribed our way through the centuries – and thus set a degrading example that the colonialists left behind – instead of always publicly convicting those whose living conditions make them easy targets for a white man’s nasty conduct. Today, we are harvesting what was sown for generations. And instead of turning against ourselves, we use all sorts of means, dialectics and punishment to avoid being named as orchestrators, creators and exemplifiers of a foul way to behave.