By Mark Baber
March 5 – The Football Federation of Kenya (FKF) initiated court case, attempting to put an end to the Kenyan Premier League and replace it with a League made up primarily of what were second tier clubs, looks certain to proceed on toady, despite a High Court Judge on Tuesday giving the two sides 48 hours to try and sort the matter amicably.
The case, on which the future of Kenyan football rests, looks like proving to be another test of FIFA’s commitment to its Statute banning the taking of football matters to civil courts.
The original court case and the FKF-instigated motion which seeks to imprison key officials of the KPL for contempt of court, were preliminarily dealt with in the High Court of Kenya on Wednesday morning, with the High Court Judge directing that an application by former FKF Vice President Sammy Sholei and former FKF Nairobi Branch Chairman Dan Shikanda seeking to be enjoined in the case must be served on all parties.
The judge also ruled that the FKF’s motion on contempt of court must be served on the KPL persons named, that the FKF and KPL should meet again to try and sort the matter amicably and that if no agreement is reached then the matter will be heard on Thursday March 5.
At a meeting, held on Tuesday evening, the FKF apparently presented a compromise solution whereby both leagues would run in parallel until June 2015 when the top eight teams in each league would be reconstituted as a new top tier league.
The KPL representatives argued this solution was unfair and impractical, a violation of the FIFA statute on parallel leagues and of the FIFA policy directive on Sporting Integrity and Principles of Promotion and Relegation (for instance “A club’s entitlement to take part in a domestic league championship shall depend principally on sporting merit.”) given that the existing Premier League teams are there on sporting merit.
As the meeting broke up without agreement, the matter will now go before the court on Friday.
Unsurprisingly, Kenyan fans are not happy about the ongoing shenanigans. Neither are the players and their spokesperson, Wilson Obungu, told local media that neither league will go ahead as the players will go on strike if agreement is not reached within a week.
Former football players Shikanda and Sholei’s attempt to be enjoined in the case is no doubt linked to their suspension from their posts at the FKF (in 2012) and then expulsion from the FKF and banning from football for six years in (February 2014) for the offence of, remarkably, taking football matters to court.
Although FIFA recently intervened strongly in Nigeria’s football crisis, ostensibly to defend the principle of non-interference by courts in football matters, in the case of the FKF’s action they have until now remained silent. This is despite FIFA appointing a consultant to mediate the dispute who reported that “the strong wish of the president of FKF to increase the size of the league to 18 teams is very much motivated on promises which have been given to two teams from the National Super league. One team is Shabana FC (from the home area in Kenya of the president of FKF). The delegation got the strong impression that there is no other justification for the increase of the KPL up to 18 teams.”
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