By Andrew Warshaw
November 12 – The race for the FIFA presidency will be contested by five candidates, pending Michel Platini’s appeal against suspension, after Liberia’s Musa Bility was unexpectedly ruled out following integrity checks into the potential contenders to take over from Sepp Blatter on February 26.
Jordan’s Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, who was Blatter’s sole opponent last May and is having another crack, former FIFA deputy general secretary Jerome Champagne, UEFA number two Gianni Infantino, South African human rights icon Tokyo Sexwale and Asian Football Confederation chief Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa have all been approved.
At present, Platini, who like the others submitted his nominations before the October 26 deadline, is not included but his candidacy could be processed should his ban end before the election.
FIFA said it would not comment on the reasons for Bility’s exclusion, which the 48-year-old president of the Liberian Football Association can challenge at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
His ineligibility follows that of David Nakhid, the former Trinidad & Tobago international who never got as far as the intregity checks after being controversially omitted when one of his five nominees, the US Virgin Islands, indicated support for another unnamed contender as well.
Bility had hoped to split the African vote but is known to be a fierce opponent of Confederation of African Football chief Issa Hayatou, the senior FIFA vice-president who is running football’s world governing body on an interim basis in the absence of Blatter who, like Platini, has been suspended in the wake of a Swiss criminal investigation.
The ad hoc electoral committee headed by Domenico Scala prides itself on showing no bias and looking at the facts presented to it by FIFA’s ethics investigators. But Bility’s fraught relationship with Hayatou seems likely to be at the heart of his exclusion. Two years ago, he was suspended for six months by CAF for what was described as “improper handling of confidential documents.”
Sheikh Salman’s candidacy was approved despite pressure from human rights groups who have alleged his involvement in punishing Bahraini footballers for participating in the pro-democracy protests in 2011. The AFC boss has continually denounced this as “nasty lies”.
FIFA revealed for the first time that human rights violations formed part of the integrity check process, the clear message being that no incriminating evidence was found against Sheikh Salman – or any of the other candidates for that matter.
In a statement, FIFA said the checks covered “corporate records, litigation cases, bankruptcy proceedings, potential regulatory actions taken against the candidate and a review of media reports concerning potential red flags (fraudulent behaviour, match manipulation, human rights violations, etc.). Each candidate was then asked to comment on the content of the detailed report produced.”
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