The Executive Committee of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) should make its decision on the legality of the elections of the Guyana National Women’s Football Association (GNWFA) and the Berbice Football Association (BFA) sometime today.
The clean running of these elections is crucial to the upcoming GFF elections under a FIFA-brokered deal Noel Adonis, General Secretary of the GFF last evening said that due to a meeting of the electoral commission he was unable to make contact with it committee but gave assurances that he will do so today.
Earlier yesterday he confirmed that he was in receipt of the reports of the elections.
Sources say there seems to be an apparent conflict of interest given that at least two of the GFF executive members have a vested interest in the two associations participating in the elections; Vanessa Dickenson, President of the GNWFA and Dwayne Lovell who is a part of Alfred King’s slate. King is contesting the presidency of the GFF. Both Dickenson and Lovell are vice- presidents on the current GFF executive.
At both the GNWFA and the BFA elections, the executives failed to submit audited financial statements. In the case of the women’s association, Dickenson asked that she be given two weeks after the elections to produce the audited statements while the BFA requested until May, one month after the April 12th elections.
This publication is in receipt of reports from both returning officers for the two elections. Lyndon France, the returning officer at the women’s elections submitted a two-page document in which he did not state that the president failed to submit any audited financial statements which is a requirement under the constitution.
However, Lawrence Griffith, returning officer for the BFA elections submitted a detailed report on the elections proceedings.
Four clubs that were found ineligible to vote have since written the GFF protesting the elections results on the grounds that no financial report was presented by the BFA.
President of the BFA Keith O’Jeer presented a signed letter from the auditors asking for time to present the statements for 2010 to 2011.
Stabroek News made contact with three of the four candidates: Ivan Persaud, Christopher Matthias and Alfred King for comment on the latest developments.
Persaud said he preferred not to comment on the matter until the federation pronounces on it.
However in the case of Matthias, he does not believe that the federation should be the body to make such a decision.
“I don’t think that it is right for the GFF to look into issues where their executives might have been involved. FIFA mindful of the environment of mistrust sought to bring a measure of certainty to the GFF electoral process, but my understanding is that might not happen on the 12th with all the happenings leading up to that event on the 12th of April, 2013. So I think that once you have any issue especially with electoral concerns it should respectfully be addressed by the electoral commission”.
He said too that it was for that very reason when the Georgetown Football Association (GFA) held its elections that I refused to have GFF officials supervise its elections process. The association, he said, sought the services of independent, impartial and trustworthy individuals to supervise the election process while GFF officials were only there to monitor the process.
“And I think that should have been applied by the GFF and all the other associations”, Matthias said.
Meanwhile, King when asked for a comment said the level of inconsistency is what is responsible for the current situation. He said there are provisions in the constitution to address the issue of audited financial statements.
“It can be in process, they can be a statement of acknowledgement from the auditors, saying that we are working on this and it should be ready by this timeline because they will have a turnaround time to deal with this. Because once you submit statements then their work will begin and those things. And so similarly you will have clubs having to meet those minimum requirements too for them to be eligible to vote at the associations’ level”.
The rush, he said, to get associations in line, should not be done whenever elections arise but they should be done long before with efforts being made for those unable to get themselves ready.
