World football governing body, FIFA, has dispatched a delegation to Nairobi as it seeks to restore sanity to the Football Kenya Federation, which has been rocked by a decision of the Sports Disputes Tribunal that nullified football elections in the country.
Kurunzi understands the FIFA team is expected in Nairobi on Tuesday night and will hold several meetings with, among others, Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed and Principal Secretary Peter Kaberia.
The team is also expected to meet with Sports Registrar – Rose Wasike.
However, a paranoid FKF president Nick Mwendwa is working hard to exclude other key stakeholders from the itinerary for fear of being exposed for the manner in which his federation has mismanaged the game.
The SDT, following two petitions that challenged the legality of the elections, ruled that Mwendwa had failed to demonstrate how public participation had been undertaken in coming up with the elections code and found that two individuals appointed to the electoral board were ineligible.
The John Ohaga-led team found that the electoral code was inconsistent with the Constitution of Kenya, the Sports Act, FIFA Statutes, the FIFA standard electoral code (footnote 2) and the Sports Registrar’s regulations.
The tribunal ordered that the polls start afresh and stakeholders be involved in the new process but the FKF, when announcing a new roadmap, did not indicate how stakeholders would be involved in the process. Critics have quickly dismissed the new electoral code as a sham, saying it is the same document that was rubbished by the SDT.
Mwendwa is worried that he is losing control of the process he had vowed to go ahead with despite the SDT ruling before FIFA prevailed on him to not defy the tribunal.
Kurunzi understands the FKF boss had wanted to proceed with the national elections last weekend but a long phone call from FIFA’s head of associations Veron Mosinga-Omba changed his mind.
The FIFA team’s itinerary is yet to be confirmed but stakeholders are looking forward to having their voice heard and their views taken into serious consideration ahead of the fresh elections.
Mwendwa’s term ends on 10 February 2020 and as the clock ticks, there is growing concern of a vacuum should there be no elections by that date, which scenario might lead to FIFA appointing a normalisation committee to oversee the transition.
