FIBA rejection of national team forces PM involvement
The game between Belize and Panama is over, but the tough battle is still looming ahead and it’s not even with the Mexican team either. It is the International Basketball Federation’s vehemence for claiming that most of the players who were not born in Belize were naturalized citizens, and only one of which would be able to play per game according to FIBA rules. But the players aren’t naturalized so that didn’t work. And on last night’s newscast, we reported on the new age rule that FIBA threw at the team. The fans and supporters cried foul and the prime minister via phone today confirmed that FIBA’s new rule is apparently not even in the rule book.
Via Phone: Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Even a knowledge of the rules can’t help you if it turns out that governing bodies will do a number in the way it appears the FIBA body has done a number. I am saying that when I saw the rules afterwards, the rules don’t say what the general secretary told me so it seems that we’re so much at the mercy of the whims of these international sporting bodies that it’s a great pity. I didn’t have a copy of the rules with me at the time and so when the Secretary General said the rules said A and the rules said B I was in no position to argue. After I had completed the call, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Murillo had arrived and they brought me a copy of the rules. In a sense it was a pity I wasn’t able to speak from knowledge of the rules when I was dialoguing with Mister Baumann. In any event I don’t know that it would have made any difference just to put me in a stronger position to argue the case from a position of authority. Mr. Baumann is saying that it has nothing to do with whether these Belizean players are naturalized Belizeans or Belizeans by descent. They accept fully that these players are Belizeans by descent but he’s saying that according to the rules if you are entitled to nationality by descent and you don’t take it up before you’re sixteen then that’s a problem in terms of you’re playing for, in this case, the Belizean National Team. When I looked at the rules afterwards, the rules say no such thing. In any case we went back and forth. And at the end he said it was not his personal decision. The secretariat or the governing body had met and discussed this issue and the decision was what it was. I asked him—I indicated that we would be seeking to protest and to appeal and I asked him to indicate to the governing body that we really needed for them to keep the matter under review and basically that’s how the conversation ended.”
The Prime Minister said that the Ministry of Finance is taking up the cost of the appeal and he will do whatever he can to see the issue resolved.
