“Anything but Hadad!” TTFA members accept Fifa amendments to avoid NC extension

Members of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) are now officially in election mode, after agreeing to constitutional amendments that many feel to be deeply flawed.

Today, the membership approved the revised TTFA statutes to complete the tasks of the Fifa-appointed Normalisation Committee. And the Robert Hadad-led committee, according to a release from the TTFA Media, “will now proceed in organising elections of a new TTFA executive committee, in accordance with their mandate”.

On 8 December 2023, the Normalisation Committee dispatched draft statutes to the TTFA members and the response, from those who read it, was largely horror followed by a detailed retort.

On 24 January 2024, Fifa Chief Member Associations officer Kenny Jean-Marie responded with a few “insignificant alterations”, according to TTFA members, and what they considered a threat.

“Based on the initial decision of the Bureau of the Fifa Council to appoint a normalisation committee for TTFA,” said Jean-Marie, “elections of a new TTFA executive committee will only be able to be held once the TTFA Statutes (and other regulations where necessary) have been revised and brought in line with the Fifa Statutes and requirements.”

Or, as it was translated by the membership, accept the amended statutes or prepare for an extension of the normalisation committee.

“It doesn’t make sense even discussing it,” said one TTPFL club director. “You either sign it or we can’t get back the TTFA.”

“I will not change a comma in that document: approved already!” said another member, who spent much of the past four years criticising the stewardship of the Normalisation Committee. “Just call the elections!”

“They want us to refuse, so they can keep the Normalisation Committee in place,” said another administrator. “Our position is: anything but Hadad!”

So, what were the changes to the TTFA’s Statutes?

First of all, it’s worth noting that the previous TTFA constitution was also approved by Fifa—and not a concoction of previous president William Wallace. In fact, the last amendments happened during the term of the late Raymond Tim Kee and were in place for the entire term of his successor, David John Williams.

Of course, Wallace’s use of the constitution to defy Fifa’s attempts to oust him rankled the global football body’s Zurich body. And, predictably, the amendments ensure this is no longer an option.

Article 13.2(d): “[…] it will refer in the last instance (that is, after exhaustion of all internal channels within the TTFA) any dispute of national dimension arising from or related to the Statutes, regulations, directives and decisions of the TTFA only to CAS, which shall definitively settle the dispute to the exclusion of an ordinary court.”

But the new statutes went much further than merely denying the TTFA the right of justice from the local courts.

There were, among several eye-raising alterations, significant changes to the voting members of the local football body and the process for electing a new president.

In Article 26, entitled Delegates and Votes, each licensed TTPFL Tier One club is afforded “two votes per club, represented by one delegate”. The top six clubs in the TTPFL Tier Two standings also receive two votes—except in cases where one of the top six teams already has a vote, like Police FC, Defence Force, and Club Sando, at which point the votes will go to the next club in the standings.

In the previous constitution, the Pro League and TT Super League clubs had 18 votes—10 and eight respectively, with one per team—from a total electorate of 49 delegates.

The amended constitution gives 36 votes for Tier One and Two clubs—24 and 12 respectively, with two per team—from a new electorate of 57 delegates.

And, in a stroke, the 18 clubs, a combination of semi-professional, amateur and service teams, went from having 37.8 percent of the electorate to 63.16 percent of the total vote!

“Each regional association (such as the Northern and Eastern FAs) will be entitled to the same two votes,” stated Trinidad and Tobago Football Referees Association (TTFRA) president Osmond Downer, in a letter to Fifa on behalf of the membership.

“It cannot be that each single one of these clubs—many of which comprise amateur players with other full-time jobs—will have the same voting power as each one of the regional associations, which, in total, cater for 92 amateur clubs, an average of 15.3 clubs for each association.

“This is unacceptable.”

Downer wondered why Fifa wanted the TTFA to have Statutes that were so out of sync with international convention and urged a rethink:

• For the FA of England, the mother of all FAs, we see the following: The FA Council, which functions also as the Congress: total votes 92; professional clubs votes: 16 – a percentage of 17.83 for the clubs.
• For the Jamaica Football Federation: A total of 57 votes, the elite clubs’ votes: 16 – a percentage of 28.07 for the clubs.
• For the Australia FF: the elite clubs have a total of 10 total votes – a percentage of 10 for the clubs.
• For the South Africa FA:  from 224 total votes, the elite clubs have a percentage of 2.68.
• For New Zealand:  a total of 28 votes for clubs with the stipulation “regional associations shall never have less than 50% of the total voting strength”.

Fifa’s response? Accept it, or take more of Hadad.

Why does Fifa care to so empower TTPFL clubs anyway?

At present, the TTPFL competitions, the backbone of Trinidad and Tobago’s adult domestic football, are beholden to Fifa funding. Unlike the Pro League and TTSL, which had independent stewardship, the TTFA manages the TTPFL directly and employs its CEO.

It creates a situation where almost two-thirds of the local football electorate owe their direct survival to the TTFA president and, higher up the food chain, Fifa funding.

Hadad, as Normalisation Committee chairman, cannot run for the TTFA presidency in the upcoming election. However, TTPFL CEO Colin Wharfe can throw his hat in the ring.

If Wharfe does challenge for the top administrative sport position in the country, he would have the ability—thanks to Fifa money—to bend the ear of the electorate like no other candidate.

There is more.

Article 30.3 – 4 (elections): “The election for the positions within the Executive Committee shall take place by slate. A person cannot be a candidate on more than one slate.

“[…] Each Member shall support one slate only. If a Member supports more than one slate, none of its expressions of support shall be considered valid.”

This not only denies TTFA members the right to run for office as an independent, but it severely restricts the voters’ ability to select their preferred candidates.

It is not only unprecedented in local football elections, but in elections full stop. Not even Fifa has such restrictions on its electoral process.

“Voting by slate is against the democratic right of a delegate to vote for the individual of his or her choice for any particular position,” Downer wrote to Fifa.

“One may not want to vote for a nominee on a particular slate for a position and can very well want to vote for a candidate on another slate. This right is practiced in all democratic institutions.

“What happens if a nominee withdraws from a slate just before the election date? Is that slate cancelled?

“This slate voting can verily lend itself to corruptive sabotage of any particular slate. We propose that all elections should be by voting for individual candidates.”

Fifa, again, resisted Downer’s arguments.

Former Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC) and Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC) president Brian Lewis was part of the Constitution Review Committee in 2014, which came up with the last TTFA constitution.

And he is looking on keenly at the imbroglio.

“I think the decision to accept the constitution as is, may have more to do with the stakeholders having reached the point that they want to move past the normalisation committee to the election,” Lewis told Wired868.

“But it is very unfortunate, because the Fifa-imposed constitution where they are insisting on slates alone—it is not something I am aware of with any international federation, including the International Olympic Committee.

“In fact, I am not quite sure that there is any constitution currently in any international federation where that has been imposed… I don’t know if they are using Trinidad and Tobago as a guinea pig of sorts.

“It will be interesting which other international federation will have that particular clause [placed] in its constitution. I can imagine the decision to support a constitution that has undemocratic elements in it, is more one of pragmatism than anything else. And it will be interesting to see where it goes.”

Another notable alteration is in the composition of the TTFA executive committee, which replaces the formerly named “Board of Directors”.

The Statutes proposed last month would have seen the local football body run by a seven-member executive committee—the president, two vice-presidents and four ordinary members—with at least one person being a woman.

The previous board of directors comprised 16 members: one president, three vice-presidents, a representative from each regional association (central, east, north, south, eastern counties and Tobago), and one member for the Pro League, TTSL, Veteran Footballers Foundation, Women’s Association, TTFRA, and Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL).

Downer noted that the TTFA’s Constitution Review Committee of 2014/15, which was guided by Fifa official Primo Covarro, opted for a 16-member board for two main reasons:

• (a) to have at the disposal of the board of directors information and feedback from the important components of the TTFA’s body, and
• (b) to have sufficient members to chair and man all of the necessary Standing committees that (comprise) the bodies of the TTFA, as seen in Article 20 of the Constitution of the TTFA.

“The difference between these two compositions is, to say the least, startling,” stated Downer. “We are at a loss to comprehend the reasons for this vast reduction in the number of members. There will need to be a comprehensive explanation for this vast difference.

“The number seven is, indeed, much too small.”

Downer again compared the amendments foisted upon the TTFA with the statutes used by other Fifa member associations.

The England FA has a 92-member board, while the South Africa FA (39) and the United States Soccer Federation (23) also have significantly more representation at board or council level.

Jamaica has an 11-member board while Australia and New Zealand have nine members each—all with representation from their respective regional associations.

“We propose that there should be three vice-presidents [and] we should stay close to the number of members as stipulated in Article 33 of the (2015) TTFA Constitution,” wrote Downer.

Here, Fifa relaxed its initial position slightly, as the Statutes accepted today allowed for one president, three vice-presidents and five ordinary members—a total of nine executive committee members.

There was another change to rules for the eligibility of a president.

The 2015 Constitution stated that candidates for the board of directors “shall have been active in football for at least three years during the five years preceding the election. This activity must have been performed in a managerial or a similar position in the territory of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.”

However, the amended Statutes ask only that the TTFA’s executive members “shall have already been active in football at any time during the last eight years”.

“This could mean that even an equipment manager or a masseur or a player who has been attached to a football club for even one month or even one week during the last eight years can be proposed for the post of president or vice-president,” stated Downer. “Heading the TTFA requires experience in football administration for a sufficient period of time.

“We propose the following wording […] ‘shall have been active in football for at least two years during the four years preceding the election. This activity must have been performed in a managerial or a similar position in the territory of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago’.”

Fifa did not budge.

It swings open the possibility that the TTFA might have a president or board member who has only had a passing affinity to local football in the past eight years, and does not necessarily reside in Trinidad and Tobago.

Does Hadad or Fifa already have persons in mind?

For several TTFA members, they would rather take the chance of defeating a candidate planted by Fifa with the benefit of a gerrymandered electorate—as opposed to the certainty of another six to 12 months of Hadad.

They would literally prefer the devil they do not know.

Perhaps if they beat the odds at the upcoming elections, the TTFA membership could reverse some of Fifa’s less savory amendments. But it is worth noting that, on the last occasion that local football stakeholders ignored Fifa’s preferred leader—then John-Williams—they were “normalised” within three months.

Lewis was skeptical about the members’ ability to loosen Fifa’s grip on the TTFA at this stage.

“While there may be the view that a new TTFA executive, post-elections, may want to consider a further constitutional review to remove that undemocratic clause—I suspect those that may have that in mind are fooling themselves,” he said. “I can’t see that any potential change to a more democratic clause will be deemed by Fifa to be in compliance.”

Lewis, who holds an administrative post with Northern Football Association club Harvard, said he is also intrigued with the relationship between Fifa and TTFA as his own executive master’s thesis was on governance.

In his opinion, the TTFA Statutes agreed by the local football membership today would not stand up to scrutiny in any other jurisdiction.

“It is unfortunate that the stakeholders would have felt that this was necessary to move past the Normalisation Committee,” said Lewis. “It is almost like a poisoned chalice, but one can understand why the stakeholders may have felt that way.

“If one has to be honest, there is no way an anti-democratic clause like that ought to have been agreed to and accepted. I can’t see that imposition being tolerated in most countries and jurisdictions where they pride themselves on a democratic approach.

“But it is what it is and that is the reality of Fifa when they are dealing with countries like Trinidad and Tobago, where it is really about colonisation and re-colonisation.”

Sunday 28 January 2024 would go down as a bittersweet day for local football, though.

But, crucially, members now look forward to electing their first football president since 24 November 2019.