We need democracy in action, not democracy inaction
Or the first of them at any rate.
You can’t please all the people all the time, as they say, but there must be a case to say the end result has left us with the most unsatisfactory situation in living memory, what with so much of the electorate disgruntled with most of the parties, and others aghast at some of the independents returned in the likes of Kerry and Tipperary.
Not for the first time Winston Churchill’s observation about democracy being the worst kind of government, apart from all the others, wormed its way to the frontal lobes. “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” was another of his takes of course.
It may be that the country is asked to ‘get it right’ by doing it all over again. Unpalatable as that sounds, it is unfortunate the same can’t happen in some sporting circles given various bodies around the world have elected and reelected men — isn’t it always men? — who we knew or suspected to be less than exemplary.
The scandals that have engulfed organisations such as cycling’s UCI, athletics’ IAAF and Fifa have stripped the scales from all our eyes and made a mockery of the elevated principles and slogans which have been shoved down our throats by people for whom it is all anything but a game.
The problem is s is painfully difficult to construct a workable framework for a sporting organisation. They aren’t businesses and they aren’t charities, but instead a hybrid of both, and with a whole lot of other unique factors thrown together. Professionals and volunteers co-exist, or are meant to. Profits are called surpluses and money isn’t even supposed to be the guiding light even if we know financial enrichment has become king.
You look at Fifa and the like and you see systems rotted to the core by the centralisation of too much power in the hands of too few who have been able to bend the democratic processes to their will — and then you look at the GAA, where they could badly do with a more streamlined model where the head honchos have more say.
It isn’t easy to discover that balance. The GAA is proof of that. We’ve recently been treated to an abundance of speakers and writers laying bare the many faults of Annual Congress, the latest having offered up the usual number of unsatisfactory deliberations and decisions in Carlow last weekend, but that is merely one branch of an administrative tree that is well overdue a good trim.
You could go into plenty of detail, mind-numbing and reader-losing detail, about the administrative labyrinth that serves the association, but the fact that there is not one but two people sitting at the summit — a director-general and a president— sums up just how unwieldy the thing is.
It would be tempting to compare it to a two-headed snake only for the fact that we hold Paraic Duffy in too high esteem and Aogán Ó Fearghail, who this column has had no dealings with, comes across as a decent man attempting to do a decent job. Even still, it is not a scenario that invites clarity of purpose.
Pretty much every sporting body has a chief executive and a president, but the GAA is almost unique in the fact both continue to wield such considerable power. Former president Nickey Brennan did suggest some years ago that his successors should adopt a more symbolic role, but this hasn’t yet come to pass.
It is inevitable that both men will hold different, at times even conflicting, priorities, but then that would be merely an echo of the discordant sounds we hear on an annual basis when Congress delegates come to bat for their own little duchies rather than the good of the wider kingdom.
These are delegates mandated for the most part to vote on the basis of what is good for their county and/or province rather than what might better serve ahead the wider organisation. It is the same approach that stymied real progress in the FAI and boxing’s IABA and it has been the source of considerable criticism of both bodies.
And yet every year we see members of GAA county boards and provincial councils go against what are clearly the greater needs of the majority of their members - the lot of the club player being the latest one — and it is accepted as merely the way things are, always were and always will be.
The GAA has a lofty and admirable mission statement and a commendable vision. They’re on the website, so you can look them up. They also have a list of 15 values and are in breach of at least seven of them as things stand. Three of them speak specifically of their ambition to serve their players:
“We provide a games programme at all levels to meet the needs of all our players. We provide the best playing experience for all our players.”
“We structure our games to allow players of all abilities to reach their potential.”
Did Congress live up to those last week?
No, it did not and it is by failing to live up to other values — such as the one about “effective teamwork on and off the park” being a cornerstone of the association, or the one that bigs up the commitment “to listen and respect the views of all” - that is preventing them from doing so.
The fact is that the GAA, wonderful and unique though it is, doesn’t currently possess an administrative structure that is fit for purpose. You simply cannot gather a few hundred sports administrators in one room, all of them harbouring their own divergent agendas, and expect them to affect meaningful change. Praising an organisation for its democratic principles is all well and good, but democracy must be practical, too. It must work for the people and it must be seen to work for the people. Can the GAA really make a claim to that as it stands?
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @Rackob
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