Kamanga, FIFA can’t chair – Siwale

MUKWIMA CHILALA writes NEITHER Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president Andrew Kamanga nor the FIFA representative should chair the planned stakeholders meeting, says Blackwell Siwale . Siwale is opposed to proposals suggesting that the FAZ president and the FIFA representative were the only one’s mandated to lead such a meeting and has insisted that a neutral person must oversee the meeting. The former FAZ executive committee member, said that despite Mr Kamanga being mandated by the FAZ constitution to chair an Emergency meeting, he was an interested party hence the need for a neutral body to do so. Siwale noted that Kamanga was an interested party that had been at the helm of an executive that had banned several officials through its ethics committee. Siwale, however, said that FIFA could ordinarily have chaired the meeting but unfortunately they were also conflicted. He said that the soccer governing body had taken a position of extending the mandate of the current executive without quoting any statute. Siwale was of the view that the planned stakeholders meeting could only be chaired by any other body that was neutral. And when asked whether the appointment of a neutral body to chair the meeting was backed by the constitution, Siwale said that a crisis needed extreme measures to sort it out. “There is a precedent that was set in the 2001 minutes of the 2000 AGM in which the Governors of our football foresaw this vacuum happening again after Teddy Mulonga’s ex-co resigned so Mr Nkole (Joseph) and Simataa (Simataa)were names floated as chairs. Simata emerged winner and chaired the meeting,” Siwale said. The Congress then foresaw that in case we have such a problem in future we shall have the general secretary to run the affairs of the Association for 45 days after which he shall call for a general meeting. So in this instance we should not be discussing the ex-co on force manure but the general secretary running the affairs. Siwale noted that the Executive committee of FAZ was not the Secretariat and hence the General secretary should have been bound to continue running the affairs of the Association after 45 days if the pandemic had not ended by then. Sports Minister Emmanuel Mulenga last Friday announced that FAZ and some stakeholders had agreed to hold an Emergency Council Meeting to iron out pressing issues and perceived differences that had rocked the sport. But FAZ through its vice president Rix Mweemba clarified that what had been called for was stakeholder consultative meeting.