Orientation classes for the new corporate boys in MCF.

Please read this first. Here.

There are many anxieties about the new "corporatisation" exercise of MCF and how this will impact on the rights of the State Affiliates after the last AGM. So I was asked yesterday by the Secretary of one State Affiliate to write on my views concerning this.

Let me say right off that it is not necessarily a bad thing provided the State Affiliates retain their right to elect a new committee should this exercise fail or we may find that we now have a dictatorship that cannot be removed.

Note: The need of the States to write in to COS remains. I am informed that 2 States have done so and another one is still thinking about it. I do not think that is sufficient. More States need to write in to express their concerns or it may come across as sour grapes writing in after a loss. 

The most important outcome that the States will need from COS is a ruling that says that the entire committee must step down at the AGM and the new committee is elected afresh by the States. This one factor alone will allow for transparency and accountability by the MCF committee. Without this it will be in essence a dictatorship. 

This was the major flaw in the strategy of the last campaign in not pre-empting the ruling from COS before the AGM and we are now left with the precedence created from this mistake. This one mistake will colour the future of the entire chess community as well as the status of MCF as an NGO. It now looks like and maybe even sound like an NGO but it may no longer be one. So this needs to be clarified with COS if you want to retain your rights. 

However this must now be the exercise of the individual committees of the State Affiliates. As for the rest of the chess community we must continue to move on. I hope I have made myself clear on this.

Now lets go back to the article in the link above. I have always maintained that the right corporate participation is a good thing for Malaysian chess. The proviso being that they recognise that chess is a very powerful tool for the development of our children in these days of intense global competition and that they have not come into chess just for status and their egos. This remains to be seen.

The major problem we faced within the chess community was that we were ruled by very small minded, fear ridden cowboy type people with gangster like characteristics. What we needed was to be governed with proper and fair rules by people with a powerful Vision of what chess can do to develop our extremely talented and gifted children. Chess has the potential to develop future global corporate leaders if used in the correct way.

Furthermore, it was obvious that the old committee did not have the core skills or competency for proper governance and so we saw the extreme psychological attacks by very sick and damaged people on our young minds as well as the abuse of power to kill off competition without us having recourse to any remedy.

Having said all that there is still a major cultural divide between corporate players and the successful running of an NGO. I hope that I will be able to bridge that gap with my experience in and insights into both environments, if I am allowed, so that we can have a smooth transition.

And so this orientation exercise is important.

Continuation in part 2. The Orientation proper.