(Trinidad Express) Caribbean Football Union (CFU) presidential candidate, Trinidadian Harold Taylor, has declared the recent decision by 26 Caribbean football presidents to form a normalisation committee to execute various tasks on behalf of CFU as illegal.
“It’s unconstitutional,” Taylor declared. “You can’t call a meeting of presidents and then turn it into a CFU Congress. The CFU statutes state that to have a CFU Congress there must be at least two elected members present. There was none. Blatter is talking about cleaning up FIFA of corruption, but Blatter is back to his crookedness because he is supporting people who are acting contrary to the CFU statutes.”
And former FIFA vice-president and CFU boss Jack Warner has also questioned the legality of the new body, especially since his long-time associate, Jamaican Captain Horace Burrell has been included on the normalisation committee despite still being on a FIFA ban.
“Why was Captain Horace Burrell appointed a member of this so-called normalisation committee when he was suspended for six months by the same FIFA? Is it that if he agrees to serve three months he will be on two years’ probation during which time he will have to carry out the dictates of FIFA to avoid being suspended for the other three months,” Warner asked via a lengthy press release.
Former CFU general secretary Taylor is one of three candidates vying for the post of CFU president, along with Jamaican Tony James and Derrick Gordon of Antigua. The Caribbean Football Union’s (CFU) Extraordinary Congress to elect a new president and executive was due to take place in Montego Bay, Jamaica on November 20 but was postponed due to a lack of funding. Jamaican Burrell was also up for election, but was deemed ineligible when he was recently handed a six-month ban by FIFA, the governing body for world football.
Caribbean football was plunged into disarray in 2011 after several high-ranking officials, principally former president Warner and vice-president Lyle Austin, either resigned or suffered FIFA-imposed suspensions, fines, or reprimands amidst a bribery scandal in which banned-for-life FIFA presidential candidate Mohammed Bin Hammam was accused of offering them US$1m in bribes in exchange for votes. However, over the past few days, Caribbean football presidents met at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland where they formed a normalisation committee to run the CFU’s affairs.
Notable names on the committee included Burrell, the suspended president of the Jamaica Football Federation, who is still on a FIFA ban and will only will regain his status on January 16, 2012.
Also there is Ronald Jones, Barbados Education Minister and president of the Barbados’ Football Association and Hait’s Yves Jean-Bart. They have been joined by Luis Hernandez of Cuba, Victor Daniel from Grenada, Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, Larry Mussenden from Bermuda, Everton Gonsalves of Antigua & Barbuda and Rignaal Francisca of Curacao.
Taylor described the recent happening as a sinister plot by FIFA to impose its preferred candidates as both head of Caribbean football, and influential officials in the Caribbean, North and Central American (CONCACAF) zone, of which the Caribbean has the majority 30 members. Taylor remains defiant, stating he is still a candidate for CFU president regardless of what FIFA does.
“I am going nowhere. I am still a candidate,” Taylor declared. “They can appoint whatever committee they want, at some time they still have to hold a CFU Congress to elect a new president and members,” Taylor told the Express..
Warner described the Zurich meeting as “a farce of epic proportions” and argued that neither the CFU nor CONCACAF bodies are members of FIFA, and therefore neither organisation has any legal standing within the FIFA or vice versa.
“The (Caribbean) presidents attended the meeting in Zurich to presumably discuss various matters that should have been within the sole purview of the CFU membership,” Warner declared. “When it was discovered that the meeting went against the constitution of the CFU, an Extraordinary Congress of the CFU presidents was hastily called for the next day. ”
