The Pakistan Olympics Association will this coming March would see lot of trading carried out with its president Lt Gen ® Arif Hasan facing tough opposition in the POA elections.
Although Gen Arif claimed to have the support of 75 officials, his immediate rivals Qasim Zia, President Pakistan Hockey Federation and Maj Gen (retd) Mohammad Akram Sahi, President Athletics Federation of Pakistan too claimed to have got ample support to overthrow Gen Arif from presidency.
The POA on Saturday revealed a complete procedure of rules that should be followed for the coming elections during which at least 96 sports officials will cast their votes and in case the court proceedings of three federations took final shape then there would be 104 voters. The procedure was given for the first time because there has never been a situation when voting had taken place.
The POA has for the first time since the inception of the Pakistan Olympics Movement chalked out an election procedure which was never been come into force. And POA president after consulting the POA constitution and the IOC Charter issued the elections rules.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday at the Olympics House, Gen Arif dispelled the impression that he was manipulating a move to rig the elections.
H was flanked by Ch Yaqoob, Shaukat Javed and POA secretary Khaliq Khan. “We have formed an Election Commission having three advocates in the body and have sent to the aspiring candidates. And if the candidates have any objection to any rule they can approach the Election Commission following the procedure laid out in the constitution.
“Ali Raza (advocate) is the chairman of the commission while Dr Irfan Masood Sheikh (advocate) and Lt Col ® Khalid Hussain are its members and Owais Waheed (advocate) is the secretary. And all that has been done according to the Article IX (4) (a) of the constitution,” he mainatined.
Islamabad Olympics Association President Brig Arif Mahmud Siddiqui on Friday termed the formation of the election commission as Gen Arif’s move to get himself elected for the third term.
The LOA President termed the move not only as unethical but also contrary to IOC Charter. He further said, since General Arif Hasan himself (so far) is contesting the election himself he should not be appointing his hand picked election commission with absolute powers without any representation from the General Council of POA or the other contenders. IOA considers the move as uncalled for and non transparent. Therefore IOA will protest against this move, Brig Arif Siddiqui added.
Gen Arif, however, stated that they have also requested the Olympics Committee of Asia and the International Olympics Committee to send their representatives to monitor the elections. “We wanted to keep everything transparent and following the procedure an email has been forwarded to all the candidates with the nomination forms and now they have enough time to return their nomination papers. We have not given any cut off date for collecting the forms and instead emailed all the relevant documents to them,” he added.
He said that Khaliq Khan has even talked to Asif Bajwa, secretary PHF on phone informing him about the procedure and no one has filed any objection so far.
He further stated that there was also contrasting reports on show of hands or secret balloting. “POA constitution is clear in this regard and where its is silent it is stated that IOC charter should be followed which calles for secret ballot. And if anyone have any objection on that he should ask the Election Commission. We would be willing to suggest to the Election Commission to have an agent of every candidate with the ballot boxes at the time of shifting and counting of the votes.
Like all the other candidates, Qasim Zia and Gen Akran Sahi, Gen Arif also claimed to have the support of 75 officials.
