PORT LOUIS, Mauritius: FIFA introduced new integrity checks on senior officials and welcomed a woman onto its exclusive ruling board yesterday, changes the much-maligned world football body said signaled it was close to completing a drawn out and often criticized path to reforming itself.
“I am happy to say that FIFA has weathered the storm. We have emerged from troubled waters,” FIFA President Sepp Blatter proclaimed to delegates at the annual congress on the tropical Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
FIFA’s long-serving captain said the ship had reached “transparent” waters in Mauritius after a rocky, scandal-hit few years for the powerful and 109-year-old governing body.
Yet the head of the expert reform panel advising FIFA earlier told delegates it was only the beginning of the organization’s attempts to modernize and that it had still had lots to do, including making the salaries and bonuses of its big earners public, and establishing age and term limits for senior officials.
Swiss professor Mark Pieth said FIFA’s leadership needed to show a commitment “that they really want to go down the road to reform.” Pieth said before the start of the congress that FIFA’s reforms were only about halfway to completion and there were “remaining challenges.” He said the integrity checks introduced weren’t as strict as they could be, and that it was “essential” that FIFA also introduces term limits on senior officials.
“The logic there is to say you don’t want networks and old boys groups to establish themselves over 30 years or so. That’s a real issue,” Pieth said.
However, the issue of term limits and age restrictions for senior officials were pushed back to next year’s congress. Those reforms could affect any plans the 77-year-old Blatter may have of standing again for the leadership in 2015 — even though he has said he won’t.
The proposal to postpone the vote on age and term limits drew an active debate on the floor, with the Danish and German delegates reflecting UEFA’s frustration that those issues wouldn’t be settled despite a two-year discussion over their implementation and the importance placed on them by the expert reform panel.
The proposal to shelve the issue until next year eventually passed by a vote of 123 to 16, meaning 68 of the 207 national associations voting Friday either abstained or did not register valid votes. The issue of whether to make the salaries for Blatter and other officials public also wasn’t dealt with in Mauritius.
