By Andrew Warshaw
February 22 – The sensitivity surrounding Friday’s FIFA presidential election has been racked up a notch after FIFA rejected a demand from one of the candidates to use transparent voting booths to ensure delegates do not photograph their ballot papers.
The request came from Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, who is growing increasingly suspicious of dirty tricks as he bids to make a late challenge to the two front-runners, Sheikh Salman and Gianni Infantino.
Under FIFA’s statutes, voting is secret and in a statement through his lawyer, Prince Ali, who has developed a somewhat fraught relationship with Domenico Scala, head of the body which oversees the electoral process, said he wanted to “safeguard the full transparency of the electoral proceedings.”
“Only a transparent booth can prove that each voter is following his heart and conscience and that there are no forced votes by preventing voters taking photos of their voting paper to prove that they’d followed voting instructions,” AFP quoted Renaud Semerdjian, one of Prince Ali’s lawyers, as saying.
Voting papers will only be issued inside the booths and in a statement FIFA said that Scala, who has already outlawed mobile phones and cameras from polling booths, had rejected this further request.
Prince Ali, who lost to the outgoing Sepp Blatter at the last election in May, is also concerned by unconfirmed rumours that Blatter and Michel Platini, who would have been favourite to replace the veteran Swiss had he not been banned, have been privately contacting federations asking them to back Gianni Infantino, Platini’s replacement in the election.
Earlier this month Prince Ali raised the tempo by suggesting reprisals get meted out to FAs who disobey their confederation leaders. ”Development projects mysteriously stall; tournament hosting bids are suddenly compromised or withdrawn; national teams start to mysteriously face less favourable fixtures or and even referees,” he charged. “All of these are effective ways to punish member associations that fail to demonstrate political loyalty.”
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