So, FIFA have had their congress which by some – mainly FIFA – was called “historic”, and by others a “whitewash”, “irrelevant” or worse.
Under the rainy skies of the African island nation of Mauritius, 209 FIFA Members met and the individual delegates cast their electronic vote. Actually, they also cast their more traditional manual vote in a secret ballot that determined which one of three women candidates would be FIFA’s first elected Executive Committee (Board) member.
But as soon as the vote was cast and the results were released, it mattered little that it had been a pretty grass-rootsy affair in democratic terms: what mattered – to some, at least – is that the Australian candidate, Moya Dodd, attorney-at-law and Member of the AFC Executive, did NOT win.
Ms Lydia Nsekera from Burundi, who won over her two rivals pretty much hands-down, did not so much as get a congratulatory comment by media pundits who were physically absent, but very much ideologically present via the live streaming of the event (FIFA, apparently still caught in the quagmire of medieval processes, some say, did broadcast the entire congress live. But that, too, was insufficient in terms of “transparency”, it seems).
Ms Nsekera had to apologise for her victory in some eyes, instead of being celebrated by all to have become the first ever female Member of the FIFA ExCo, formerly an exclusive old men’s club for 109 years.
“Bloggers without a real cause” but tons of astonishing bitterness and frustration in their belly for not being of any relevance to anybody, sharpened their darts and threw them at the winner, while loudly complaining that the only “real good candidate, one that was totally qualified” blah, blah, did not win. Same Maya Dodd, exactly.
Those people seem to forget that Australia simply cannot win these days. No matter what they do in football, they lose. Although Dodd did not spend 45 million of Australia’s tax-payers Dollars on her campaign, she still lost. After having staunchly battled for a position at the top table, and having apparently done all the right things, she lost. These guys cannot win with or without A$45 million funding, can they? Maybe people just simply don’t like them? Maybe people have simply understood that with the total negativity that governed the published opinion throughout their World Cup bidding campaign, football people just want to see their backs, if anything at all? – Just a thought.
Be that as it may, Australia simply doesn’t seem to be a winner in football these days. Besides the fact that their football is pretty dismal to begin with (they drew with Japan the other day which made Japan qualify for the 2014 World Cup and this year’s Confederations Cup. Australia now has to battle it out with Jordan tomorrow (July 11, 2013) who have the same amount of points, but one more win at present. If the Aussies draw or lose, they are out of the World Cup. Of course nobody would want that, right?), their football politics suck, too.
The African delegate won, and the lawyer from post-imperialist Australia lost. So much for that, and good so.
But a handful of rather comical writerlings had this to say (or similar stuff): “The whole system was flawed from the beginning and I am very disappointed with this decision. It was a ridiculous way to go about things because it obviously gave Lydia a head start. Why didn’t we go for an elected position a year ago? I am not sure it was based on credentials, more on image and perception. Everyone is pandering to the African vote.” (Source: The Guardian – which, unsurprisingly also published a piece by an Australian a day later, damning the vote and upholding the virtues of the loser).
What exactly do these profound words of wisdom mean, please? The whole system was “flawed”? Really? So, the secret vote was somehow tampered with then, was it? Or, was it simply that the candidate who is also Burundi’s FA President and the nation’s IOC delegate had the wrong colour of skin to please some seriously unique people? Or, is it that the Australians – just like their English forefathers – are among the sorest possible losers on the face of this earth? What really was it?
Frankly, one is led to believe that the reverse-race-card has been played one time too many. “Pandering to the African vote”? Really?
What about selecting a person of one’s choice? Why is the election of an African woman the same as “pandering to the African vote”? And who would say something like that? An African? Hardly. An Asian? Maybe. A blurry-eyed white man or woman? Certainly.
It is pretty telling and sad enough that FIFA took far too long to include women in their leadership: many things that went badly wrong during the past decades would probably not have gone so badly wrong with the female element on board.
But what is also telling, is this: now that not one but three women have a seat at the top table (Nsekera elected by the Congress to serve a fully term, while the two losers have been co-opted for one year), the vote was “flawed” and the “wrong” candidate won, because the Aussie genius was so much superior. Really, again really?
It is hard to take lectures in democracy from people who secretly abandoned their own citizen; yep: Assange. And people who record everybody’s phone conversations 24/7, whilst others continue to torture men who have not only not been charged with a crime but who have been cleared “to go” (from Guantanamo).
If Nsekera’s election was “flawed”, then what was Bush Jr.’s election “victory” in Florida? If somebody who dares represent the disenfranchised, exploited and enslaved for hundreds of years, and quietly works on helping to lift women out of their unjustified position as second class citizens, what exactly is wrong with that?
The commentary about Dodd having been the better candidate is nothing but a reflection of the white man’s mantra that “only white can do it”. It is time we all understood that “white” is a minority in this world, and that the vast majority is pretty sick and tired of the “white man’s arrogance” – and the white woman’s, at that.
Why don’t we call the baby by its name, then, and identify what is what and why. The fact that FIFA is making strides to re-invent itself, to improve its structures and to change its conduct, this is something that many who hate Blatter and the entire ExCo (over which he never had an influence to begin with) simply cannot believe nor accept. To them, the sole solution is radical destruction of the FIFA that is – without having a clue how to deal with what a FIFA should be.
There is an ideological war being fought, which is fashionable at best and pretty limited in unbiased intellectual observation. This war stands for “the new bitterness” which qualifies the conduct of some and the naked hatred by a few. It is an unhealthy approach where constructive criticism would be the proper remedy.