Dear Editor, Will CISNOC (Cook Islands Sports and National Olympic Committee) show us where their policy allows the Secretary General to leave his post and work for someone somewhere else and more to the point when and who made the policy? (CISNOC head’s remote work arrangement questioned, Cook Islands News, December 2).

I bet you it was Owen (Lewis) who makes up his own rules and inserts them into policies and throws them to the board who typically don’t read any of these missives then he gets to pass into law his own agenda.

Who in their right mind believes that anyone can operate a whole department from afar. It might be in the policy due to changes made during Covid times but that is a different time from consciously applying for a second job and giving it your 100 per cent focus while putting your primary job on hold.

If Owen and Hugh (Graham) think it is acceptable and the reviews showed all was well, then show us the reviews. Clearly from the debacle of the financial and transportation to the games it is not working well.

Leaving his kids in charge of the house does not excuse Owen from forfeiting his duties to the Cook Islands. Now he wants a government job, well he’ll probably get it because now he can show he is prime government material of spending all his time overseas instead of in the office while still being paid the big bucks.

If the job can be done online then why do we hire someone in the first place? We could just contract it out to a management firm in Timbuctoo.

If the government gave $500,000 where is the other money CISNOC are supposed to give to the federations like the Olympic funds?

Owen has the nerve to tell us we should be proud of the team because they looked good in their TAV uniforms which costs far too much every time we send athletes away, we looked like Australians by the way. His goal was 25 medals and we didn’t get it. He missed his KPI and how will he excuse that? Saying we brought culture to the games by playing drums is not why we were there; they were supposed to bring their A game not their exhausted stressed out from fundraising around their training game.

CISNOC need to be transparent because they weren’t when asked ‘where is Owen?’ Hugh Graham saying it was a personal sabbatical, made it sound like a health issue. He also said it was for six months from January and yet we only see Owen now in December which is 12 months.

Transparent. Will we see the board’s review of the games which was the pinnacle of his job this year and how well it worked not having him on the ground dealing with day to day issues? Who is paying for league extra flights? How does soccer get to walk away from the Pacific Games and give the country a bad name just because they are not in the finals? If they already booked the tickets then they knew ahead of time, why did we send them? When will federations get their money owed to them? Who will be responsible and accountable for the failure to reach the goals set for Pacific Games?

The male club in CISNOC has allowed them to get away with a myriad of unprofessional conduct while elevating their own status in the sporting world. It should be called out by the federations but they won’t because CISNOC hold the purse strings and if sport codes want the money promised to them, they have to let the male leadership do what they want.

Will we ever get some honest people working in CISNOC? Ever since Geoff Henry was called out in 2011 his family via the Grahams have continued an attitude in sports of taking every opportunity for themselves and their friends without conviction leaving sports codes struggling for themselves.

Sports fan

(Name and address supplied)

Editor’s note: The letter was sent to CISNOC president, Hugh Graham, and secretary general, Owen Lewis, for their response.