WAL­TER AL­IBEY

In spite of pos­i­tive re­sults on the field of play, mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) have agreed to take a stance against the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport.

Vice pres­i­dents Lennox Wat­son, Rudolph Thomas and Kr­ishen­dath Kuars­ingh as well as oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers Roland Forde, Neville Fer­gu­son and Richard Kwan Chan, in a penned let­ter to the me­dia, stat­ed that they have lost con­fi­dence in pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee.

They de­scribed the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the sport over the past three years as the low­est it has ever been due to pres­i­den­tial in­com­pe­tence and lack of con­sul­ta­tion with ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers and/or the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion on crit­i­cal is­sues.

The ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers al­so high­light­ed a num­ber crit­i­cal de­ci­sions made by the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent that de­railed their con­fi­dence in him.

These in­clude: Al­leged pay­ment to the pres­i­dent's son for pro­vid­ing a TTFA web­site with­out con­sul­ta­tion and agree­ment of the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and or the emer­gency com­mit­tee; Il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al dis­missal of the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the TTFA; Tak­ing uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sions with re­gards to mat­ters per­ti­nent to the TTFA and in such cir­cum­stances, fail­ure of the pres­i­dent to con­vene one sin­gle meet­ing of the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee, of which he is the chair­man to ad­dress such mat­ters.

The de­ci­sions al­so in­clud­ed; Fail­ure of the pres­i­dent to con­vene one sin­gle meet­ing of the Fi­nance and Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee and/or the Fundrais­ing Com­mit­tee of the TTFA; Fail­ure of the pres­i­dent to en­sure Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial state­ments for the last three years, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion pos­si­ble strate­gies to do so, as ad­vised by Robert Reis of KP­MG; Fail­ure of the pres­i­dent to en­sure a strate­gic plan for the de­vel­op­ment of foot­ball in Trinidad and To­ba­go over a ten year pe­ri­od is pro­duced; Not pro­vid­ing rel­e­vant, time­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate Fi­nan­cial state­ments over the last three years lead­ing to the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the in­debt­ed­ness of the As­so­ci­a­tion, to the ex­tent that the as­so­ci­a­tion may be bank­rupt; Un­der Tim Kee the Stand­ing Com­mit­tees sys­tem has failed to func­tion; Not ad­dress­ing in a time­ly man­ner a threat by the FI­FA to in­sti­tute dis­ci­pli­nary charges against the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion for fail­ure to ad­here to a FI­FA man­date to pay for­mer Na­tion­al Women's coach Evan Pellerud.

Wat­son said the de­ci­sion by the ex­ec­u­tive is a bold move to save the sport of foot­ball from a cer­tain sus­pen­sion by the world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA. This let­ter was sent out to all stake­hold­ers of foot­ball in T&T, as well as the FI­FA. "We must un­der­stand that we are in a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion and it is crit­i­cal that the FI­FA knows so that ex­treme mea­sures are not tak­en against us" Wat­son ex­plained yes­ter­day.

A re­li­able source, how­ev­er, told the T&T Guardian that there are at­tempts to en­sure that the No­vem­ber 29 elec­tions do not come off as ex­pect­ed. And if this hap­pens it can spell dan­ger for T&T as its ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are to be com­pli­ant with the FI­FA if they are to be al­lowed to vote at the FI­FA Con­gress.

Ac­cord­ing to the source if they do not vote it would mean an im­me­di­ate ban for the ex­ec­u­tives from the FI­FA which would lead to no rep­re­sen­ta­tion for T&T at the FI­FA lev­el.

The Guardian ques­tioned Wat­son about the time frame giv­en to the TTFA to be com­pli­ant and he said "TTFA ex­ec­u­tives have been giv­en a cer­tain pe­ri­od of ty­ime to be com­pli­ant by the FI­FA and that time is No­vem­ber 30. If we are not com­pli­ant by then, we will be giv­en an­oth­er 18 months be­fore the FI­FA will in­ter­vene and throw us out as mem­bers.

Now af­ter watch­ing the game on Fri­day night I am sure that the TTFA be­ing thrown out will hurt all the play­ers who played and all oth­er play­ers through­out T&T and there­fore what we are try­ing to do now is to do dam­age con­trol be­fore it be­comes worse" Wat­son said.

Mean­while, Wat­son added al­so that the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball had or­dered the TTFA to make pay­ment of well over $200, 000 to Pellerud- the Unit­ed States coach who was at the helm of the TT women's team for the FI­FA Un­der-17 Women's World Cup in 2010 from Sep­tem­ber 5- 25. That or­der was not ad­hered to.

The T&TFA vice pres­i­dent has made it quite clear he will want noth­ing to do with T&T foot­ball af­ter the com­ing an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) and Elec­tion of Of­fi­cer on No­vem­ber 29 be­cause of the de­struc­tion to the sport by Tim Kee.

Con­tact­ed Tim Kee said he was not sur­prised by the ac­tions of his ex­ec­u­tives. "They are the ones who have crit­i­cised me when I took up of­fice in 2012 and there­fore they have been very con­sis­tent. I can tell you though that they are the ones from the Jack Warn­er era who are op­pose to change and who do not want the sport to progress" Tim Kee said.