KARACHI: Global football body FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation finally addressed the thorny issue pertaining to some clauses of the Pakistan Football Federation Constitution that were to prove an obstacle for the elections of the country’s football governing body next month but found resistance to some of the proposed amendments, Dawn has reliably learnt.

The FIFA-appointed PFF Normalisation Committee held a constitution review workshop on Monday, on the eve of the Extraordinary Congress where the amendments will be ratified, with delegates from FIFA and AFC in attendance but the proposal to have an open election, with any football-related person nominated by a member of the Congress eligible to run for the PFF presidency was shot down.

Following the long, drawn-out process of club scrutiny, district and provincial elections, the Haroon Malik-led PFF NC is reaching the end of its mandate with the elections of the PFF president due on Dec 9. However, with the constitutional clauses regarding the eligibility of the PFF president meaning only a handful of candidates could run for the hotseat, it was proving to be a sticking point. FIFA and the AFC had stressed the need to address the issue but the newly-elected Congress is only willing to elect a president from among themselves.

The current clause stipulates that a “candidate for the office of the President PFF shall have played an active role as member PFF Congress, member PFF Executive Committee, PFF elected official, AFC, FIFA for at least two of the preceding five years before being proposed as a candidate” and had to be “proposed and seconded by two PFF Congress members as proposer and as seconder at least two months before the date of the Congress”.

Well-informed sources told Dawn that the two-month deadline had to be waived due to the fact that the tenure of the NC, which was first appointed by FIFA in September 2019, comes to an end next month and that the Congress was unanimous that a candidate needed to be proposed by just one of its members.

“It was also agreed that the fact that the eligibility criteria that centred on the candidate being part of football governing bodies for a certain number of years cannot hold with the PFF having been under the NC for the last five years and the time before that also being mired in crisis,” sources added.

However, there was strong opposition when FIFA’s Head of Member Associations Governance Rolf Tanner, AFC’s Head of Member Associations Division Niren Mukherjee and AFC’s Head of MA South Asian Unit Purushottam Kattel proposed that anyone, from an ex-player to an official who had been involved in the game, could

be eligible for presidency if he or she was proposed by a Congress member.

“It effectively means that someone who has lost in the district or provincial election or is running a local club can be eligible for presidency,” one of the Congress members told Dawn on the condition of anonymity. “It’s something that is unacceptable for us and it drew a strong rebuke from all the members.”

The proposed amendments will be put to vote in Tuesday’s Extraordinary Congress and members were also miffed at the fact that three women members who complete the quorum to 26 were nominated by NC chairman Haroon himself.

The PFF Congress comprises 14 elected members, three each from the four provinces and one from Islamabad and the president of the Pakistan Football Referees Association. Eight members are nominated by the departments with one representative from the winner of the Women’s Championship. Ambiguity surrounds the nomination of the three women members and one Congress member said “Haroon had exploited it”.

“It should’ve been put to Congress to nominate three members because of that gray area in the Constitution,” the member added. A PFF NC official told Dawn that “the Congress needed the three women members to complete the quorum and Haroon as the chairman of the PFF NC [with powers of the president coming with that position] had nominated them.”

Some Congress members also expressed their displeasure at the silence of the FIFA and AFC delegates when Haroon termed himself the PFF president. The Pakistan Sports Board, the country’s sports regulatory body, has already raised objections to Haroon calling himself the PFF president in some communication.

Tuesday’s Extraordinary Cong­ress in Lahore is coinciding with a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Inter-Provincial Coordination in Islamabad, where officials of the PFF NC have been asked to provide an update on the elections. The PSB has also asked the NC to dispel concerns that the constitutional amendments will not allow Haroon to run for the PFF presidency.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2024