By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
January 10 – Issa Hayatou’s (pictured) bid to carry on running African football without having to fight off a challenge for the leadership looks a lot stronger after the Liberian FA failed in a second appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) decision to suddenly change its rules over presidential elections.
Liberia had requested the suspension and cancellation of CAF’s highly contentious rule amendment but the appeal has again been ruled “not admissible” by the sport’s highest court.
CAS repeated its opinion – first stated in November – that CAF’s own appeals procedure first had to be followed before it could intervene. It said it had “terminated the appeals procedure initiated by the Liberian FA”.
Liberia’s concern, shared by opponents of Hayatou, is that any appeal must be heard before rather than after CAF’s General Assembly in March when Hayatou is up for re-election. Currently Hayatou, who has been in power since 1987, will be re-elected before the appeal is heard. Opponents of Hayatou claim the rule change is undemocratic and was only designed to make sure Hayatou is not unseated.
The highly political amendment, adopted in September, determined that only voting members of the CAF executive committee can run for the presidency.
That ruled out both Jacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast and Danny Jordaan, the man who ran the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and effectively left Hayatou unopposed for a new term that would keep him in power until 2017. Anouma is not a voting Executive Committee member of CAF and only sits on it because he is a member of the FIFA Executive Committee.
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