Fifa says they will not fund Kenyan football elections

By James Waindi

Uncertainity has again hit the much-awaited national football elections, after Fifa failed to commit to financing the exercise that has delayed since April.

Fifa representative appointed to oversee the elections, Leodegar Tenga made the announcement on Monday night after holding a three-hour meeting with the Minister of Sports Paul Otuoma and his assistant Kabando wa Kabando and other Ministry officials and the Independent Electoral Board (IEB) at the Ministry offices in Nairobi.

Tenga also demanded that a third of the voters be women and urged IEB to prepare a new list of voters, which should be ready before August 31. This means that from every eligible club, one of the three voters must be a woman.

“About finance, Fifa does not normally fund elections for associations, but I agree that Kenya’s situation is unique and Fifa may offer some goodwill in the process. I met with the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) commissioners this morning before coming for this meeting and they committed themselves to carrying out the process, but under specific conditions,” said Tenga.

He added: “One of the conditions is the observance of gender balance in the entire process, and they are also demanding a list of all voters by August 31.

“We as Fifa are committed to using IIEC and have directed IEB to come up with a new list of voters to be advertised before the end of the month,” said Tenga.

Otuoma insisted that the Government still wanted the exercise to be held before September 10, failure to which they would be forced to disband the entire process and run the sport.

“We have had a lengthy meeting with IEB members and Fifa representative Tenga, but the Government’s position on this is clear. I agree that gender representation is vital in the process and we want a credibleexercise but before September 10,” said Otuoma.

On the issue of the deadline issued by the Government, Tenga said: “I wouldn’t want to comment on that at the moment, I know Kenyans wanted the elections like on Tuesday, but after getting the list of voters by end month, it will now depend on IIEC.”

Tenga also insisted that the 1,558 clubs will be the ones to vote at the elections, but urged stakeholders to help identify ghost clubs from the list.

“The elections will be held on the basis of the code and only the clubs that participated in the KFF and FKL leagues for the last two years are eligible. IEB have veted them, but other stakeholders should also help in the vetting,” he said.

KFF Secretary General Lodvick Aduda said the issue of women voters would encourage a dubious process since 90 percent of the local clubs did not have women.

“We do not want directives that would jeopardise the election process. Most of the clubs do not have women officials and if this is made a requirement, many clubs will be forced to pick women who even know nothing about football to vote and that is the beginning of rigging,” said Aduda.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Hussein Mohammed and Sammy Sholei said the process is flawed and said the IEB is not up to the task. They are demanding an audience with the Fifa officials to seek the way forward.

“We are pursuing the issue with the relevant authorities, including the office of the Prime Minister. It is necessary to escalate the situation, since we have not heard back from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in more than a week after presenting our petition.

“These elections have taken longer than expected, and the fact is that we are existing in a football vacuum,” they said in a statement.