By Aineamaani Atwine
Football Administrator and FIFA Club Management graduate, Ivan Kakembo has petitioned parliament against the FUFA president’s overstay in power.
In a letter to the clerk of parliament on Monday, the former URA and SC Villa boss reveals that the sitting president has among other things breached the principle of separation of powers and continued to lengthen his stay in the position.
“There is total disregard to the principle of separation of powers by these Federations, where the sitting presidents chair the Executive Committee meetings, the General Assembly meetings, and Emergency Committee meetings. All regulatory and statutory amendments are proposed by the Executive Committee and the General Assembly is chaired by the sitting president. This means that the incumbent presidents preside over their Elections for which Federation heads have since turned into a life presidency.” Kakembo said.
He also described the criteria used for nomination of the federation presidential candidates as unprecedented, vexatious, frivolous, and bad in law and practice, irrational, irregular, marred with eminent malice and bias, discriminative, very prohibitive, non-inclusive, apathetic and deterrent in every nature and form.
“The procedure and criteria set are very deterrent and non-inclusive as the bar is far raised to be reached by any other competitors save for the incumbent Presidents. For Footballers, whether ex-internationals or active or any other person save the incumbent FUFA President it’s made impracticable for them to ever get a chance to be eligible for nomination as FUFA President as they cannot fulfill the requirement of 7 years in the last 10 years of being active.”
It is upon this background that Kakembo has requested that in the proposed National Sports Bill 2021 which has been received by the clerk on Wednesday 9th December 2022, the Committee on Education and Sports should closely scrutinize governance and the whole regulatory regime of the sports federations, publicizing of electoral processes among others. The
“The proposed bill MUST introduce term limits for national federations and also grant powers to the national council of sports to conduct elections in these national federations to ensure compliance. Concerning BILL NO, 34 – Powers of the Council.”
Kakembo further revealed that the sanctions against Moses Magogo in 2019 caused disrepute in Ugandan football. FIFA opened an investigation against Magogo on 23 July 2018 related to the resale of FIFA 2014 WC Tickets by Article 67 paragraph 1 of the FIFA Code of Ethics, and after a plea negotiation, FIFA and Magogo agreed on a fine of CHF 10,000.00 (ten thousand Swiss francs) and a two-month suspension from taking part in any kind of football-related activity at national and international level
Kakembo further revealed that Federations in Uganda do not budget surplus funds for commercial investments and this will only promote conducts such as Misappropriation of Funds, Corruption among others thus demoralizing the zeal for provision.
About the Bill:
The object of the Bill is to regulate the operation and administration of national sports associations, federations and community sports clubs.
Magogo told Parliament at the time that the Bill proposed the creation of a Sports Fund to provide sustainable means of supporting sports in Uganda.
It also sought to repeal the 1964 National Council of Sports Act, and enable Uganda to harness available opportunities in local and international sports.
