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Paying the price
The Malawi National Council of Sports should be the last to be surprised by the stand taken by Fifa on the Fam executive. The mess we are in at the moment was created by the Council because it allowed people who could not authenticate their eligibility to stand in the Fam elections.
I know the Council already apologised for this but I am not sure if they knew the exact gravity of their mistake. It was already clear before the elections that there was some movement to remove the requirement for MSCE and the returning officers themselves are on record as having insisted right in Mzuzu that the agenda would be restricted to elections.
Any discerning person could have known that there were some aspirants to Fam executive positions who did not meet the requirement and should have, therefore, been strict. Had Council been firm at that very moment that no MSCE (or its equivalent) no candidacy, the discourse now could have been on more progressive matters than the silly debate that has been allowed to drag on unnecessarily.
Again although Ashford Mamelodi was somewhat ambiguous in his statement on who should run Fam, it should have been clear to Council that the Cosafa gentleman was sympathetic towards the unqualified executive aspirants. That may be why, if I am to believe press reports, he used someone’s private vehicle and not what Council had arranged for him.
What I don’t like about the whole thing is that, as I said last week, instead of concentrating on the many real problems besetting our football, we are busy commenting on a debate that will take us nowhere. The more some people expose their inadequacies through ridiculous statements in the media, the more some of us get irritated.
On a sober note, though, commiserations to Mamelodi for the loss in the Caf elections of his boss Ismail Bhamjee. African football bodies value incumbency. That is why the majority of them voted for Sepp Blatter in Fifa elections in 2002 against their own Issa Hayatou. This time they, including those from Bhamjee’s Cosafa region, have voted for Hayatou in the Caf elections.
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