Dear Friends and gentle readers today I am going to venture down a road I have seldom travelled. Today I am going to write about sport. Fortunately for all sport fans my concern is not about any players, or any game or the performance of any team. I am prepared to leave those subjects to the professional sportswriters. My concern is the place of sport in public policy and, in particular, the question of how and to what extent Governments should exercise control of sport in their respective countries.

I am fully aware that merely to pose that question is to open myself to howls of protest from people who subscribe to the view espoused by Olympic Charter that, "The organisation, administration and management of sport must be controlled by independent sports organisations."

Recently one of our local sport administrators, Brian Lewis, writing on the on-going dispute between the Government of Guyana and the Guyanese Cricket Board, declared that, "International sport governing bodies will not countenance government interference. It's a no no." Mr Lewis went on to ask the question, "But why should government interfere in the running of sport? Why is it that the primary stakeholders aren't the ones taking decisive action to correct poor governance?"

The idea that Governments should have no part in running sport in a country is certainly not to be dismissed out of hand. The core argument of those who support this principle is that the opportunity to participate in sport to the best of one's talent and effort is one of the fundamental rights of every individual and should in no way be compromised or denied by virtue of political affiliation or ethnic background or any other such consideration.

In other words those who support this principle believe that politics (and by extension governments which are fundamentally political creations) has no place in sports. Given the history of political discrimination and victimisation practised by so many of our Governments here in Trinidad and Tobago, that is a prohibition to which we must give due respect.

But, as always, there is another side to the story. Mr Lewis has argued that "primary stakeholders" are the ones who must take decisive action. But the fact is that, for several powerful reasons, Governments tend to be, after the individual athletes and players themselves, the most important stakeholder in most sports.

Governments become stakeholders in the first place by virtue of the fact that they spend large sums of taxpayers' money to assist in the development of sports. Such monies are spent not only in the subventions given directly to sporting organisations to run their affairs but also include the huge sums invested in infrastructure like stadia and cycling tracks and swimming pools.

But the necessary interest of governments in sport extends beyond the strictly financial investments which they make, as important as those are. For what most governments are very cognisant of these days is the tremendous role which is and can be played by sport in national development.

Sport today is clearly recognised as more than just entertainment. The Indian government, for example, clearly identified the role of sport in national development when, in a published policy on sport, it stated, "government has an important role to play to promote sports in a country. Active participation in sports reduces health hazards, encourages coordination and cooperation. It helps in character-building. Sport also provides national pride at the international level and regional pride at the national level. It generates employment, attracts foreign tourists and thereby foreign capital. Thus, sport contributes to the social development as well as economic development of a country and therefore the role of government in promoting sports cannot be ignored."

Similar sentiments have been expressed by governments the world over. So the question, therefore, is why should governments not seek to exert influence and control over an area of national life in which they spend so much money and which can have, if properly handled, such a tremendous impact on national development, especially when it becomes clear that the "independent sporting organisations" have become little more than satrapies of corruption, mismanagement, and self-enrichment?

This is the central question to be asked of the situation in Guyana, a country in which cricket, like in so many other West Indian countries, not only plays a hugely important part in the culture but is one of the few instruments on national integration? When the Guyana Cricket Board has been wracked with allegations about financial improprieties, unaccountability and other matters including improperly acquired visas, when a member of the board was recently doused with acid after having raised concerns about board activities, when the "independent sporting organisation" comes to behave like a criminal "mafia", which "stakeholder" is left to intervene?

But we need not go to Guyana. Here in Trinidad we recently witnessed the unseemly sight of players who played their hearts out for this country having to go to court to get what is due to them and then having to seize the property of the "independent sporting organisation" whose primary concern should have been the players' welfare, to realise the court judgment.

The fact is that "independent sporting organisations" have in too many instances degenerated into self-perpetuating and self-aggrandising cliques, and it is the individual sportsmen and women and the country as a whole which suffers. And it does not help when the international governing bodies' only response is to repeat the simple-minded mantra that governments should not interfere in sport.

Sport is too important to be served by such blind allegiance to unsustainable dogma. Sports administrators who are genuinely concerned about their sport should now take the lead in opening a debate, as an urgent matter of public policy, on the question of how and to what extent governments should exert influence and control over national sports.

• Michael Harris has been for many years a writer and commentator on politics and society in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean. He is a

long-standing member of the Tapia House Group and works as a human resource executive.

—The Michael Harris column

will next appear on February 27