The Guyana Football Federation (GFF) under new president, Christopher Matthias produced its most potent muscle flexing exercise to date, handing down an eight-year ban to Upper Demerara Football Association (UDFA) president, Sharma Solomon and five years to his executive members which includes GFF vice president, Collie Hercules.
During the first congress for 2014 yesterday at the GFF’s head office, the decision was made to ban Solomon, Hercules and the rest of the UDFA executives from football and its related activities after they disregarded the GFF and went ahead and held their GT Beer tournament on New Year’s Day
alongside the GFA Banks Beer competition.
“It sends a message that the GFF is serious about transparency, accountabilty, professionalism and most of all discipline,” Matthias told Stabroek Sport yesterday.
“The congress has formally established zero tolerance for any disregard of its directives and or decisions, all the members of the GFF are required to comply fully with the directives and the decisions of FIFA, CONCOCAF,CFU, the GOA and the GFF.”
Matthias continued “And this decision must be respected by all its members.”
When contacted both Hercules and Solomon contended that the decision was not made by an extraordinary congress and therefore the decision was unconstitutional.
According to Hercules:“At the Extraordinary Congress that was convened today, I refused to sit at the Congress because it was in my opinion not constitutionally correct, I attended a meeting last Friday with the executive committee and at that meeting we had agreed that the annual general congress to be convened on the 26th of April and that was the congress that we decided on.”
He added:“A couple of days after we received a correspondence saying that there is an Extraordinary Congress for today, Friday, I immediately sent out a memo questioning the validity of this Congress because at our last executive meeting the committee did not decide on an Extraordinary Congress and based on the constitution only the executive committee can call an Extraordinary Congress at any time.”
According to Article 27 in the GFF’s constitution its states that:
The Executive Committee may convene at any time.
The Executive Committee shall convene an Extra Congress if one-third of the Members of the Federation make such a request in writing. The request shall specify the items for the agenda. An Extraordinary Congress shall be held within three months of receipt of the request. If an Extraordinary Congress is not convened, the Members who requested it may convene the Congress themselves.
The Members shall be notified of the place, date and agenda at least one month before the date of the Extraordinary Congress.
When an Extraordinary Congress is convened on the initiative of the Executive Committee, it must draw up the agenda. When an Extraordinary Congress is convened upon the request of its Members, the agenda must contain the points raised by those Members.
The agenda of an Extraordinary Congress may not be altered.
Hercules added:“We are hearing that they are sanctioning us but we want to wait until they are official and we receive them in writing from the GFF and then we will plan and proceed how we go forward from there.”
He continued:“I think this is a sad day for football in Guyana, this executive is not even a year old and there is too much in-fighting and Colin Klass is probably smiling today, I think the general council needs to be more active in terms of what is happening in and around the federation and not allow another dictatorship to happen, we are not following the rules, personal interests is what is getting back into football and I think its a sad day for football. Similar sentiments were echoed by Solomon.
“The executive committee did not convene the Congress” he said. “If the meeting was not constitutional it will not carry constitutional merit, based on the constitution that was not a congress, until they can justify that as a Extraordinary congress then we can go forward. The football saga continues.”
