By Andrew Warshaw
June 9 – One month after suspending the elections of the Sudan Football Association (SFA) at the request of the incumbent SFA officals, FIFA have now threatened to throw out the African country altogether if a controversial government decree is not revoked within the next 24 hours.
Last month, concerned that the Sudanese Government was meddling in the election, FIFA gave Sudanese FA a six-month deadline to organise an independent process “based on new FIFA-approved SFA statutes” and warned that otherwise “the SFA shall be automatically suspended with immediate effect until elections are held.”
Furnished with new information, FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura has now written to the president of the Sudanese FA, Mutasim Gaafar, re-iterating FIFA will not tolerate government interference.
In a faxed letter dated June 7, a copy of which was sent to the African Football Confederation, Samoura noted that Sudan’s ministry of justice allegedly issued a decree on June 2 giving the police the right to access the Sudan Football Association (SFA) premlses, to “evacuate the buildings and to expel Members of the Board of Directors and to use their force if necessary”.
“Furthermore, we also take note that once the evacuation was completed, the premises of the SFA were apparently handed over to General Abdel Rahman Sir Al-Khatim, the newly government-appointed President of the SFA under regulations issued by the Government of Sudan.”
This, said Samoura, broke the rules in terms of member associations managing thelr affairs independently and could result in sanctions “even lf the third-party influence was not the fault of the member association concerned.”
“Consequently, we would klndly ask you to inform the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice that if his decree has not been reversed by Saturday 10 June 2017, the case will automatically be referred to the Bureau of the FIFA Council to consider the suspension of the SFA.”
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