POA convenes meeting to discuss much-feared govt’s interference in federations’ polls

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) has convened an emergent meeting of its General Council on May 3 as an overwhelming majority of the sports federations were taken by surprise by ‘The News’ story appeared on Thursday, revealing the government’s plan regarding formation of a commission to conduct federations’ elections in future.

The news, which spread like jungle fire, forced the POA to convene General Council’s meeting to consider, among other things, the threats to autonomy of national sports federations and its impact on future sports events.

The POA in a letter addressed to all the affiliated federations stated that an emergent virtual meeting through Zoom has been convened on May 3 under the chairmanship of POA president Lt Gen (r) Syed Arif Hasan.

Other agenda items of the meeting will be confirmation of the minutes of last elective general council meeting; implementation/progress on the decisions of the General Council of the POA; participation in the XXXII Summer Olympic Games Tokyo 2021.

The main focus will be on the agenda item IV as an overwhelming majority of the federations termed the decision by the Ministry for IPC to constitute a government-backed election commission to hold federation elections and a judicial commission to hear the grievances of banned, suspended officials and players as a big threat to the autonomy of the federations.

“It is some sort of direct interference into the working of federations’ affairs. All the federations affiliated with the international federations and governing bodies are following the election procedures. We conduct elections under that charter where one of the international body representatives also oversees the process. We in no way are ready to hand over this power to the government. The government is there to facilitate, not to dictate the federations,” one of the federation officials said.

He added that his federation was the one that had requested the POA to convene a meeting to discuss the emerging situation.

“When it comes to maintaining players and officials’ discipline, every federation is responsible to decide the matter according to the laws. So the Election Commission and Judicial Commission is being made part of the sports policy is something very alarming. I will raise my voice in the POA meeting on May 3,” he said.

The Ministry for Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) is in process of inviting or having verbal discussions with selected federations to get their feedback on the new sports policy that will shortly be forwarded to the prime minister for his approval.

Group Captain Tahir Sultan who also met the IPC’s think-tank recently proposed that the feedback request must come in writing, seeking in writing reply rather than verbal discussion.