GFF to make pronouncements on GNWFA and BFA elections today

- General Secretary Noel Adonis

The Guyana Football Federation (GFF) said it will make a pronouncement on the legality of elections of two of its sub associations sometime today.
In the lead up to the GFF elections on April 12, a number of its sub associations have held elections so as to be able to exercise their franchise come April 12.

Noel Adonis
Noel Adonis

Two of those sub associations, the Guyana National Women’s Football Association (GNWFA) and the Berbice Football Association (BFA) recently held their annual general meetings and subsequent elections of office bearers but there have been protests that those elections were not altogether free from controversy.

General Secretary of the GFF, Noel Adonis, yesterday told Stabroek Sport that …“Berbice and the Women’s I will say give us until tomorrow (today) because at this moment we are looking at the reports coming out of those two meetings and we are going to make pronouncements from there.”

According to Adonis, he wants to be in possession of all the necessary information before making any pronouncements.

“I think I would not want to start any conjunction or speculations,” Adonis said.

He also said that the Electoral Committee has its job to do as well.

Neither sub- associations were able to produce their audited financial statements at the AGM’s. President of the Women’s Association Vanessa Dickenson asked that she be given two weeks extension to produce the statements while Keith O’Jeer of the Berbice Football Association has asked for an extension of two months to produce the statements.

Also at the elections of the women’s association Dickenson produced minutes of a meeting that was held in 2008.

“That is what I am saying; I need to be able to put that in the context of the report given by the people who would have presided over the meetings in conjunction with constitutional environments of the BFA and the GFF,” said Adonis.

He was also asked whether the Berbice association should be allowed to vote at the GFF AGM given that it will not be presenting its financial statement until after the elections.

To this Adonis just said it was a good question.

On the question of whether the federation has a system in place to monitor its affiliates, Adonis said, “well again the constitutions of the two organizations are slightly different and the Berbice term of office I think is one year and the women I think is four years. So I think there are two different types of requirements. And one of things we have been attempting to do is when we changed our constitution to have all the associations have their constitutions mirror us. It has been slow in doing.”

He said that all the relevant documentation will be handed over to the Electoral Commission tomorrow.