Sang Mendy
Football delegates from member countries are in Zurich to vote in the president to replace the shamed and passively pilloried Sepp Blatter. The vote will take place on Friday and the winner is expected to try to take the damaged organisation forward into a new era.
By Friday night, a winner will be declared. Some of the delegates from 209 member nations are already in Zurich for what is billed as an "extraordinary congress".
It would be recalled that Sepp Blatter announced that he would step aside in June, 2015 after 18 years as Fifa president after series of revelations on scandalous and dubious acts the world governing body was allegedly involved in to allow someone to help clean the mess.
Five candidates in the race to replace Sepp Blatter and they are Sheikh Salman, Giani Infantino, Prince Ali Bin Hussein, Jerome Champagne and Tokyo Sexuale.
But before the election, representatives have to agree to a package of reforms designed to eliminate the problems that have plunged Fifa into crisis in recent months and restore its reputation.
- Specifically, Fifa wants members to agree to term limits for top officials along with disclosure of their salaries.
- Responsibility for everyday business decisions will be removed from the "political" representatives of national associations.
- The "executive committee" will be disbanded. In its place will come a new 36-member Fifa council, which will include a minimum of six women, to set global strategy.
- The day-to-day running of Fifa will pass to a new "general secretariat" - equivalent to a corporate executive board - and the secretary general, effectively the CEO, will be a powerful position.
- The checks and balances will be carried out by a series of committees, the most important of which will be the fully independent audit and compliance committee.
- Fifa wants the regional confederations and national associations to mirror their efforts over time and they will place immediate new demands on them, such as annual audits.
You would think so given Fifa's recent history. However, officials aren't taking any chances. The proposals need 75% approval to be passed.
However, with this scandal still been monitored and with previous elections and bids for hosting the FIFA world cup marred with bribery and some corrupt practices, each and every delegate must be on the watch. People running for office attempt to bribe delegates to vote in their favour if they hadn’t done so already during the campaign period.
African FA heads, Gambia not excluded have been named and shamed on the media for collecting money from the then FIFA presidential aspirant Bin Hammam. News of that came out when hackers hacked Bin Hammam’s email to have access to his correspondence. They revealed all the names he secretly gave money. Most African big wigs were implicated in that scandal.
Who is going to fall victim this time?