On Wednesday evening at the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) headquarters, Liliendaal, the association held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) after which Kalam A. Juman Yassin was given tenure in charge of the sporting body for four more years.
The former Chief Magistrate, who had 20 years of service under his belt in the same capacity, will now have another four years at the helm of the body that is in charge of the country’s Olympic sports.
Yassin in speaking to media operatives after winning the presidency unopposed voiced his elation but quickly had a change of mood when he spoke of the criticisms he faced from a certain section of the media.
GOA President KA Juman Yassin
“I feel very honoured and pleased that I have been elected unopposed by the associations; the criticism that I faced from two of the journalists at the news were unjustified, they were personal, they were unjustified, they were disrespectful,” the President stated.
He added, “At the end of the day, all the associations know what has been happening they know a lot of the criticisms were unjustified and as a result of that you saw the decision tonight [Wednesday].”
The re-elected President was quizzed on if he believes his tenure was successful considering, the country would not have won an Olympic medal since boxer Michael Paris delivered bronze at the 1980 Moscow Games.
Yassin responded saying,” It still does not justify, you have to look at the circumstances, the funding and one also needs to look to see so many other countries have not won anything, at the last Olympics they were 205 countries, I think only 68 won medals, so they need to look at everything.”
In recognition of the medal drought, the GOA head says that he is buoyed by the support given to sports by the Government as reflection in the 2017 budget.
“The Minister and the Government are now seeing that more funding is needed for sports and the budget for the Sport Ministry has almost doubled; the Director of Sport made a statement that with sports, you have to invest, those are right statements and I’m hoping that we will work together with the Government,” Yassin posited.
The president will have support staff in the likes of Vice-Presidents, Karen Pilgrim, Charles Corbin, Godfrey Munroe; Hector Edwards as Secretary General, Garfield Wiltshire as Treasurer, Dion Nurse as Assistant Secretary and Tricia Fietkou, who was elected in the newly installed position of Assistant Treasurer.
According to the President, the GOA executive will be having a press conference in the coming days to update the public on the plans of the association.
