FIFA Presidential Election: Are the FA Right to Abstain?

Next week FIFA’s 208 members will vote in the latest FIFA Presidential election. Current president Sepp Blatter has held the position since 1998. He was re-elected in 2002 and again in 2007, unopposed, despite the fact only 66 of FIFA’s members supported him.

The candidate running against him is the current President of the Asian Football Confederation Mohammed Bin Hammam, who has been a member of FIFA’s executive committee, the group of people that vote for hosts for World Cups, for 15 years. Bin Hammam has been calling for change in FIFA but he is hardly an outsider, is he really going to change anything?

The FA have been calling for change but they have decided Bin Hammam replacing Blatter is not enough. And with no suitable candidate they have decided to abstain in the election. A noble decision perhaps, but is it a right one? Mohammed Bin Hammam is from Qatar, the hosts of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Coincidentally it is the decision to award the World Cup 2022 to Qatar that people cite when the failings of FIFA come up.

Qatar currently has just one stadium which meets the minimum capacity required for the World Cup. This stadium plus two more  existing ones will be expanded, with 9 new stadiums being built. The Qatari bid team clearly has a lot of money available to improve infrastructure but many people say they are not the right country to host the World Cup. The decision has drawn criticism from a variety of organisations, from the FA to the media to gay rights groups (homosexuality is illegal in Qatar).

FIFA themselves said the bid had a ‘high operational risk’. Bin Hammam could not have any involvement in the bid team as he had a vote but no doubt he would have voted for his own country, as any patriot would. And as a member of FIFA’s executive committee he is unlikely to make any revolutionary changes. 1 in 3 people that made up FIFA’s executive committee this time last year have been accused of or found guilty of bribery. However Bin Hammam thinks they do a good job and Blatter has done little about it, despite being made aware of these allegations through various Panorama programmes.

In a press conference last year, Blatter was questioned about allegations that Jack Warner, a FIFA Vice President, had sold 2006 World Cup tickets for profit by a Norwegian journalist. Blatter replied that he would investigate if he was given the evidence ‘through official channels’. The Norwegian journalist asked the FIFA media officer what Blatter meant by this, the FIFA official reportedly told the journalist he had no idea.

Bin Hammam has also had allegations made against him by Blatter himself. Allegations that Qatar’s World Cup bid team bribed FIFA members have been circling recently and Blatter alleged that his rival introduced the Qatari bagman to the rest of the executive committee. So with no 3rd candidate the FA are right to abstain if they do not support either candidate.

But then, the FA must be asked why they didn’t support their own candidate. For someone to be put on the ballot paper they must receive official support of just one of the 208 member associations of FIFA. Just one. What this means is the FA could have picked anyone who they felt was right for the job, anyone in the world, and they could have been in the running.

Whether they would have won is another story, but why abstain when they could have nominated someone else? The answer to that question could be that no one wanted the job. FIFA has almost become a clique, people on the outside want change but don’t want the job of bringing in the change. The person who has the job of cleaning up FIFA is going to have one tough job, a job no one seems willing to take on.

FIFA is an organisation that doesn’t seem to respond to change. Since the presidency was created in 1904, there have only been 8 presidents. 5 of the former 7 presidents didn’t lose an election but actually died during their term. The odds don’t look good for Mohammed Bin Hammam or those supporting change. Indeed even if Bin Hammam does win it could well be the next presidential election before people start seeing the changes that will clean up FIFA.

FIFA, Politics and Society, Sepp Blatter