SHAME ON TURKEYS NOT VOTING FOR THEIR OWN

GAA must drop the mistrust as the cry for democracy comes from club roots

IT IS not the kind of place where ordinarily we like to hang out, but if this column could be transported back to a time and place in GAA history we would opt for the Gents toilets of what was then the Burlington Hotel in 2001.

It was one of those Annual GAA Congresses that grabbed national attention, as a motion from Kilmore in Roscommon, which sought the opening of Croke Park to other sporting codes, made front as well as back page news.

It was quite the cliffhanger ballot, too, one which saw it carried comfortably in the popular vote (176 to 89) but it failed by just two votes to meet the required two thirds majority – which has since been lowered to 60 per cent – needed to change rule. But it was the conduct of that vote more than the result which revealed so much.

A call for a recount – despite the closeness of the final outcome – was rejected by the then GAA president Sean McCaigue, while one of the two votes needed to clear that two thirds barrier was lost when a Limerick delegate voted against the mandate of his county board.

But what really caught the eye was the strain of abstinence – something rarely evident in the residents bar at Congress – which infected the mood that day.

It was reckoned that in excess of 70 delegates decided to abstain. Some just sat stone-faced and braved it out, but others, quite literally, succumbed to the pressure, or at least that of their bladders, and at the time of the vote rushed to the jacks.

It is likely that in the dodgy history of urinals all nod and wink records were shattered that day.

It is a pity therefore that someone did not remind Tracey Kennedy, the Cork chairperson, of that sordid episode. She set the tone for the grievously offended majority of delegates last weekend by claiming that any attempt to record voting details at Congress was a ‘disturbing’ move, which suggested a ‘distrust’ of the GAA’s leadership

In fairness, it was before her time but there is no shortage of evidence down through history of Cork grassroots members being both ‘disturbed’ and ‘distrustful’ of their own county board.

Four years after delegates literally flushed GAA democracy down the toilet in the Burlington Hotel, the Croke Park issue resurfaced and was embraced with such fervour that a large number of Cork clubs convened meetings to support its opening, but that exercise in democracy came to a brutish end.

It was ruled out of order on a technicality – gagging its grassroots membership in the process – at a county board meeting, as Cork voted once more, unsuccessfully this time, to keep Croke Park’s gates shut.

And in a bid to resolve the 2009 stand-off between the county hurlers and their then manager Gerald McCarthy, Cork clubs took it on themselves outside of county board structures to meet with the striking players and, backed by the support of their members, expressed in EGM’s held up and down the county, gave their support.

So in the grand scale of things, there have been far more profound and real expressions of distrust directed at the GAA’s leadership than merely seeking a register of voting records.

Indeed, for an association which pays such excellent lip service to the notion that all members are equal, one would have thought that trust is better invested in ensuring transparency in its democratic structures rather than using it as some kind of balm to protect egos.

But yet a proposal which sought to enhance the democratic credibility of what is the GAA’s supreme decisionmaking body failed to attract even 20 per cent of the vote of the very body it sought to empower.

You can either choose to look at that as the kind of perverse Irish logic at play that others play for laughs, or alternatively see a line of turkeys clucking their way to a ballot box to cast a vote on a referendum abolishing Christmas.

Oh, sure there was an effort to introduce logic with claims that it would not be practical but with delegates voting electronically these days, technology would have taken care of that.

There was also the fear that if delegates arrived at Congress bound by transparent mandates, the quality of debate at Congress would suffer.

Indeed, but that seems a trifling price to pay to for real democracy at play, and, from painful experience, the quality of debate is not so rarefied that GAA Congress will ever make it into the Toastmasters Guide of debating forums that have to be visited.

The biggest flaw in the motion was that it was proposed by the Club Players Association.

Their existence is a reminder of the association’s greatest failure and inevitably provokes the kind of rage from the establishment that is rooted in a form of self-loathing.

This is not the GPA, this is not a body that is seeking to suck on the GAA’s money teat for sustenance but merely ensure that the association’s vast membership is furnished with respect in the form of a credible, definitive and fair fixture schedule.

It is not a power grab – they have committed to working within the existing democratic structures – but a cry for the grassroots to be heard

But if the establishment continues to give it the cold shoulder or try and silence a critical voice by creating one of its own – no one should be fooled by the timing or motivation behind the creation of new internal club committee and annual forum – the CPA, with at last 24,800 members, may well seek the kind of popular support that Congress will never enjoy.

The GAA needs to drop the kind of fear articulated by Cork secretary Frank Murphy, who in arguing against the transparency motion at last month’s county board meeting declared: ‘We know where this motion is coming from and we shouldn’t support it.’

It’s coming from their own and what is really disturbing is that those in charge are so blinded by distrust they can’t even see that.