FIFA election: Business as usual on confederation front

It’s less than six weeks until the FIFA presidential election, and the gloves have come off.

It all began with the announcement last week in Rwanda of a memorandum of agreement between the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) andConfederation of African Football (CAF) and “pledges cooperation on soccer and social development” in the next four years.

Innocent enough?

But the two signatories to theagreement were AFC president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and CAF president Issa Hayatou. Shaikh Salman happens to be running for FIFA president, and Hayatou has been actingFIFA president since Sepp Blatter was suspended and later banned.

Prince Ali bin Hussein of Jordan, another of the five candidates for FIFA president, immediately criedfoul, writing to FIFA’s Ad Hoc Electoral Committee and asking it to examine the deal that he views as a way of engineering a “bloc vote” in the FIFA election.

The math is simple. Betweenthe AFC and CAF, their members total 100 votes, almost enough to ensure their candidate — presumably Shaikh Salman — wins if every member of the two confederations votes as a bloc.

FIFA Electorate:
VOTES CONFEDERATION:
54 Africa (CAF)
53 UEFA (Europe)
46 Asia (AFC)
35 Concacaf
11Oceania
10 South America (Conmebol)
Total: 209

Shaikh Salman quickly fired back, calling it “an unnecessary spat between FIFA candidates” and stating, “I am astonishedabout my friend’s comments, which are wholly dismissed and entirely inaccurate.”

Shaikh Salman’s position: an agreement had been in the works for months, and it was similar to othercooperation agreements the AFC and CAF has reached in the past and the AFC has in force with other confederations. On that point, Shaikh Salman is right. Prince Ali seems a little too sensitive aboutthe signing of a cooperation agreement.

(To deflect criticism — or perhaps free himself to campaign for Shaikh Salman — Hayatou on Monday announced he was temporarily stepping down asCAF president.)

But the bigger picture still holds. Prince Ali wouldn’t be firing away if he didn’t think Shaikh Salman’s bid was gaining momentum, and an AFC-CAF alliance would putShaikh Salman in a solid position.

Even Sheikh Salman himself said he was the favorite, telling Press Association Sport on Monday:

“I seem to be the favorite to win the election, judging by the media, member associations and sports betting companies alike and I am honored to be in that position. I have been through a fewelections before and I won’t go into an election unless I have a good chance. The encouragement I have had has been a big boost. If you talk to the key people — the confederations and the memberassociations — there is a good understanding more or less on who is the favorite to succeed.”

Shaikh Salman’s presidential bid is not without controversy. Bahraini human rights groupshave accused Shaikh Salman, as head of the Bahrain Football Association, the government’s general secretary of youth and sport and a member of the ruling royal family, of helping to identify athletesinvolved in the 2011 protests by the Shia Muslim majority against the Sunni rulers.

The Associated Press reported that more than 150 athletes, coaches and referees were jailed after aspecial committee, headed by Shaikh Salman, picked them out in photos of the protests. They included six Bahraini national team players. In addition, six Shiite soccer clubs were fined $20,000 eachand suspended from the national league.

Shaikh Salman has denied having anything to do with any special committee — “When people talk about skeletons in the closet, my closet isclear,”  he told the PA — and passed a FIFA integrity test before his candidacy could go forward.

But Swiss governance professor Mark Pieth, who worked on FIFA’s originalreform proposals, issued a warning on Sunday about a member of an “autocratic dynasty” becoming the next FIFA president, telling Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “We need an outcry from the209 soccer federations. They should ask, ‘Is this what we want? Really? Is Salman a credible agent of democracy and a fresh start? Is he suitable?’”

Other questions exist about ShaikhSalman and whether he quashed an audit that looked into bribery, non-transparency and tax evasion within the AFC in theaftermath of the fall of his predecessor, Qatari Mohamed bin Hamman. But Shaikh Salman is adamant he’s done nothing wrong. Again from his interview with the PA: “There has been an integritycheck and I don’t have anything to defend myself about.”

Shaikh Salman might have done nothing wrong he has to defend himself about, but he will have to answer for the confederationsystem. It’s ironic he says he stands for change with FIFA yet might to be headed to victory thanks to business as usual.

There is areason every one of the six FIFA confederation presidents — in the case of Concacaf and Conmebol, the last three presidents — have been arrested, indicted, banned from soccer or reprimanded forcorruption or ethics violations in the last five years.

The power of the confederation presidents to deliver bloc votes gives them enormous power and has made them susceptible to beinginfluenced. Until the power of the confederations and their presidents is diminished, soccer’s corruption problems will continue.

Shaikh Salman and Hayatou delivered enough of the AFC andCAF vote that Blatter survived a challenge from Prince Ali in the May election that came just two days after Swiss police arrested seven FIFA officials on U.S. corruption charges. By any othermeasure, Blatter should have been run out of office. (As it was, he quit days later.)

And it looks like Shaikh Salman and Hayatou might deliver enough votes that Shaikh Salman succeedsBlatter.