By Mark Baber
April 17 – The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) is the latest football governing body to see vicious infighting, with allegations of corruption, attempts to disqualify potential electoral opponents, threats of legal action and attempts by the incumbent to lever FIFA’s power against potential rivals, prior to this Friday’s Punjabi Football Association (PFA) elections.
A long period of relative stability for the PFF under president Faisal Saleh Hayat, who was believed to be close to Pakistan’s previous ruling party, the Pakistan People’s Party, appears to have come to an end with figures close to the country’s new rulers looking to take over Federation affairs, with Friday’s election being an important stepping stone to control of the PFF as a whole.
Hayat has strenuously denied rival’s claims of corrupt practices during his term in office, but there is no doubt he is putting up a determined fight to cling to power, and his brother-in-law, who just happens to head the federation’s electoral commission, has barred one of his main potential rivals, Ali Haider Noor Niazi, (who is a son-in-law of the Pakistan Prime Minister’s Nawaz family), from competing in Friday’s Punjabi elections, on the basis that he has not had sufficient experience in football.
Noor and his supporters including former PFF secretary Hafiz Salman Butt staged an action, described variously as a sit-in or armed invasion of PFF Headquarters, on Saturday, in a failed attempt to force the PFF to accept his nomination papers.
Meanwhile, one candidate in tomorrow’s elections, Sardar Naveed Haider Khan who is a PFF marketing consultant, claims his phone lines are being tapped and his life is under threat amidst claims his rival Rana Ashraf is supported by the Punjabi government.
With the PFF claiming the Sports Board Punjab, a government institution, has been actively campaigning for Noor the PFF has been claiming “government influence is strictly unacceptable,” whilst Hayat is telling local media that “FIFA have always taken strict action against those associate members who interfered by the third party, especially by their governments. We have the examples of Nigeria, Indonesia and Kuwait who had to face FIFA ban because of the interference of external force in their internal matters. So we have to follow FIFA’s rules strictly to make our elections fair and transparent.”
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