gambitch - now available in blue

Sunday, July 17, 2005

I got hit by what might be a flu bug or just a respiratory tract infection shortly after the previous post, which goes some way to explain my absence - it's a bit hard to think, straight or otherwise, when you feel ill. Fortunately I am now well on the road to recovery.

And I'm glad to say I recovered without the aid of antibiotics, when at one point I seriously felt I would need it if I wanted this to end quickly; although, it must be said, quickness is a relative term. Antibiotics are usually given out in dosages to cover three to five days, so I'm not doing too badly at all even without the stuff.

Continuing on the theme of illness, on Tuesday I mentioned this court case where the plaintiff withdrew his suit. I honestly thought that might just be the end of it - sure, there'd be the public protests and all, but I didn't think that much would be changed. How wrong I was. Over the Wednesday, people started calling in droves to cancel their donations, and some folks organized an online petition. Someone even vandalized the charity's headquarters - a particularly bold feat because vandalism is seriously frowned upon and not regarded as a work of street art sometimes.

By Thursday, the charity's top brass caved in. In a hastily-arranged press conference, the chairman, chief executive and board (did I mention this was a corporatized charity?) tendered their collective resignations, and the patron, the wife of a (still alive) former prime minister also said she would be giving up her honorary position. The charity sought governmental help to clean up the mess, and the government appointed a new interim head for the organization by Friday evening.

Let me just remind everybody that this was started by a defamation suit filed by the charity and its former chief executive. An epic and embarrassing example of shooting yourself in the foot, if ever there was one.

Yet I think this - the mass resignation of this board and the chief executive - was a very wrong ending.

Why do I think it's wrong? Well, it is an admission of wrongdoing, certainly, but right now they are walking away from a charity that is supposed to have meant everything to at least some of them. The big boss, for example, has been at it for close to 40 years, which is quite some time if you ask anybody. He has almost never done anything else in his working life, so they say, and he is the face of the organization. And now he's just walking away, without offering to even serve on the reformed board.

It leads me to ask, quite naturally, whether this means he is going to sever all ties with the charity industry in general, and more specifically, helping the group of patients he apparently has fought so hard for throughout his career. If he isn't, then everything said about how passionate he was and how dedicated he was is totally bogus. Surely he's gleaned some knowledge from working with pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry - knowledge he possesses in such abundance that whoever succeeded him would find invaluable. And if nothing else, it's an issue of maintaining the public's long-standing perception that he has a heart, and it's not about monster salaries.

Which, of course, leads on to the next point. The man is offering a resignation, and already some segments of the public are saying that this is not enough. They want to see him give his salary back. Not all of it, of course, but whatever obscene amount that the public believes he has ripped off of the organization. Personally I'm curious what the man did with all that money - has he put it in stocks or did he just keep the money in the bank? But that doesn't really matter. The public believes (to use perhaps overly strong terms) he's made off with loot, and they refuse to let him keep it.

I see the point, but I think that's not the right solution either. This is a man who supposedly is the charity itself, at least in the eyes of the public. He has rendered some amount of good public service, even if his methods are a little suspect. I think forcing his ouster was patently unintelligent, in terms of retaining his expertise - which now seems destined to be locked away together with him in his decently done-up service apartment.

No, I think there was a better way to handle this. For example, put him on a nominal wage of $1 a year while still serving as the charity's chief, for however many years he stays in the job. At over fifty, it's unlikely he'll get many other jobs anyway. Put regulations on how many directorships at other organizations he may hold, and do whatever you like, but make him stay on that dollar a year. If he's serious when he says he's passionate about this charity work, he will stay. He's collected enough to spend in recent years anyway. And if he dares walk away, well...

gambitch [ 3:26 AM]