By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
FIFA is going through its worst corruption scandal in its 112 year history. Its name, its image and its credibility have all been battered and public interest in the body has fallen to a record low.
There have been scandals in the football world governing body before, allegations of bribery, racketeering and sometimes the bypass of due processes but there have been nothing of this current magnitude.
Several projects, bids and payments are under serious scrutiny by investigation bodies across the world and the most powerful men in world football have been set aside to be investigated; former President Sepp Blatter is chief among them.
“I think the reform is more important than who wins the presidential election. I don’t think you are ever going to see a Blatter again,” says Greg Dyke, the President of England Football Association.
A process in the FIFA reform project is the forthcoming elections. The body has slated February 26th of this year to hold its presidential election and the build up to this has been intense.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is the governing body of football on the continent. It has 54 member nations which makes it the largest regional voting bloc in FIFA. FIFA itself is made up of 209 member countries, and each country has one vote. A candidate will need 105 votes to be elected as the president of the body.
With this in mind, it should be noted that CAF has a significant say in every FIFA elections and with this forthcoming election, they could just be the king makers.
In the Blatter days, CAF has always given its support to the Swiss but now that his regime has been ousted they are a bit weary on where they should shift their allegiance.
President of the Liberian Football Association (LFA), Musa Bility, has warned that Africa must get it right. Taking his statement in to consideration one will understand why it took so long for CAF to come out and declare their support for one of the candidates.
The Politics
There are currently five candidates that are contesting the election; this number might be cut down as the weeks go by. They are Jerome Champagne, Gianni Infantinno, Prince Ali bin Hussein, Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa and the only African in the race, Tokyo Sexwale.
Last Friday CAF announced that it has decided to support Sheikh Salman, who happens to be the president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). If Salman is guaranteed 54 votes from Africa and 44 from his continent most people are forecasting that he is becoming an over whelming favorite in this race.
This announcement by CAF does not come as a surprise to many; this has been clearly forecasted. Early this year, sheikh Salman struck a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between his organization, AFC and CAF. This deal will focus on a number of issues, from talent breeding to marketing cooperation’s between the two bodies.
As genuine as the MoU might be, the timing of such a deal has been viewed by some as a deliberate attempt to buy favor from Africa. It is beginning to look like Sheik Salman is using AFC presidency as the perfect cover to sell himself
Prince Ali said: “The timing of this MoU between the AFC and the CAF looks like a blatant attempt to engineer a bloc vote.”
Prince Ali was the only candidate that ran against former president Sepp Blatter in May, but he lost in the first round of vote by 133 to 73.
Already he had forwarded a complaint to the FIFA ad hoc electoral committee and was waiting for their response. Prince Ali wants more questions to be asked. He believes it is not appropriate for the current leader of FIFA, IssaHayatou, and a candidate, Sheikh Salman, to be exchanging favors, even if it is on an organizational level.
However, even when CAF has declared its support for Sheikh Salman, the support for him does not seem unanimous. LFA president Musa Bility says he is supporting Sheikh Salman in the February 26 polls and he claims he is not alone.
“I have been in contact with 26 African FA presidents and none will vote for Sheikh Salman,” Bility told BBC sport.
Sierra Leone Football Association president, Isha Johansen is surely supporting Sheikh Salman. It is easy to say so base on the lifeline she is getting from IssaHayatou and CAF to continue her stay as the president of SLFA.
But if what Bility is claiming is true, then this FIFA election is surely going to be the toughest in the history of its existence.
For the very first time in 18 years and only the second time in FIFA’s entire history, FIFA is set to have a non-European president. FIFA has had eight presidents since 1904 and only one of them was a non-European, Brazilian born Jao Havalange (1974 – 1998).
With all that has gone on in FIFA in the last eight to nine months, there is a growing feeling that the leadership of the world football governing body should move away from Europe. Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini, and Jerome Valcke are in the center of all the FIFA scandals and they are all Europeans; one will be very surprised not to see the non-European candidates using this rhetoric.
Prince Ali is a more familiar face in this race, based on the fact that he has already contested one election in May last year. Good for him, back then he enjoyed the support of UEFA and some votes from his home continent, Asia. Part of the reason why he enjoyed that much support was because many of them wanted to see Blatter gone. With Blatter absent now from the picture, things are a bit unclear for him.
Europe themselves have two candidates in this race; Infantinno was the backup candidate that UEFA had long prepared just in case Platini’s scandal heat up. Jerome Champagne is another candidate from Europe, even though his campaign has not really kicked off compared to Infantinno’s.
The African story
Tokyo Sexwale is the only African in this race. Sexwale is a South African politician, business man and an anti-apartheid campaigner who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela. He also turns out to be one of the richest men in Africa with business investments in gold, diamond and platinum.
He has worked for nine years in FIFA and is regarded as one of the sympathizers of the previous Blatter establishment. His CV for the FIFA presidency is right up there with the very best but his failure to even convince his home continent to be on his side has almost sent his chances of winning in oblivion.
CAF’s open declaration for Sheikh Salman affects Sexwale’s chances worse than any other candidate in this race. There are even reports that the South African Football Association (SAFA) has piled some pressure on him to step down from the race, even though they officially deny this.
With all this happening Sexwale is still hanging on to some strange faith about winning the election.
“[The decision] is just the CAF executive committee decision and not the 54 associations that make up the continent. I still believe I can make the continent. I still believe I can win the election come the 26th of this month in Zurich,” Sexwale told the BBC.
Sepp Blatter’s 17 years in office has created an establishment that saw corruption treated with impunity for a very long time. Whether these allegations about corruption are true or not but the FIFA name is in tatters.
A credible electioneering process is a key step in this reform project and IssaHayatou’s CAF has a huge stake in all of this.
(C) Politico 10/02/16
