In the wake of the furor that
reached a climax two years ago, FIFA’s reconfigured two-chamber ethics
committee eventually said it would look into the long-running affair. Though he was labeled “clumsy” for
his part in one of soccer’s biggest corruption scandals by the committee, FIFA
President Sepp Blatter was cleared of any criminal or ethical wrongdoing in a
case involving millions of dollars in bribes for World Cup contracts, his
tenure has however been tainted by the suspicions.
Blatter
seized on that passage, noting “with satisfaction” that he had not broken any
rules. The tone of his response, triumphant at his own exoneration rather than
contrite over the fact he was a senior executive at FIFA throughout the period,
speaks volumes.
The central
charge that has dogged Blatter’s tenure – that in March 1997, when he was still
secretary general and a year before he won a bitterly contested election to
become president, a bribe meant for Havelange crossed his desk – is however
confirmed.
He indicated
that he plans to stand for another four-year term as president of FIFA when he
spoke to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) congress in Kuala Lumpur
recently.
The fact that
Sepp Blatter intends to run for another term after this current term, comes as
a surprise to many sports enthusiasts as he had previously mentioned that he
would step down from the position at the end of this term. Blatter, 77, has two
years of his fourth term of office remaining, but indicated that he did not
want to leave when they had expired.
His
predecessor Havelange, the 96-year-old who ruled FIFA for more than two
decades, was forced to resign his position as president after the FIFA two-chamber ethics committee report laid out how both he and
his former son-in-law, the former Brazilian FA president Ricardo Teixeira, had
taken a series of bribes over an eight-year period from the now defunct sports
marketing agency ISL.
A Panorama documentary also showed
that others, including Issa Hayatou and IAAF president Lamine Diack, took money
through the front company in Liechtenstein. Hayatou claimed his payments were
for the Confederation of African Football’s birthday party and Diack said his
was a gift to help rebuild a house that had burned down.
FIFA’s critics remain adamant that Blatter’s self-serving reform
process has not gone far enough or fast enough and that the “internal”
investigation was neither robust nor independent enough. Another decision to
ban Sri Lankan executive committee member Vernon Manilal Fernando for eight
years for unspecified breaches of the ethics code, could be read two ways - as evidence
of tough decisions being taken or as raising new questions over transparency.
One used to think that remorseless corruption pepped up with
shameless seasoning of tenure elongation was solely a Black African disease but
now we know better that it is, in deed, a global epidemic. It is particularly
interesting as it is intriguing that Blatter of all people, who loves to play
the holier- than-thou game in his over-bearing meddling with internal football
administration of other countries, especially of African extraction, could be
fingered in any matter relating to corruption and most recently, tenure
elongation even at his doddering age.
However, perhaps the reason is not far-fetched. Most likely that
those various allegations of financial improprieties are founded after all; in
which case one way of escaping the
costly test of the law is to clinch on to power in order to keep doctoring and
puncturing vital documents that are capable of exposing his possible shameful deeds in office. When the ambition of
tenure extension is fulfilled by all means as the Blatter’s case is tending
towards; then, the next prayer is ‘Come ye, o! Death so that this dangling cup
of shame may pass over me.’ After all, the dead knows no shame.
Former
big beasts of the FIFA jungle are being felled across the globe but Blatter
remains standing. And despite having insisted that this would be his last term
as president, he has started maneuvering his chess pieces for yet another shot
at re-election. Blatter should step aside and a new face be elected, the
corrupt era should be brought to an end and a new generation with a clean
breath of air brought in. We rest our case.
Banji Boye
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
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