Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent William Wal­lace has ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ca­ma­ra David. David has re­signed ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 30.

How­ev­er, Os­mond Down­er, one of the ar­chi­tects of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) con­sti­tu­tion, says there is cur­rent­ly no TTFA board and on­ly this body can make tru­ly bind­ing de­ci­sions. This is be­cause the mem­bers did not un­der­take the process to ap­point a full board dur­ing Sun­day’s AGM.

Down­er made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he sought to clar­i­fy what de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­ers the new­ly-elect­ed of­fi­cers of the TTFA un­der William Wal­lace now pos­sess.

Down­er, a for­mer FI­FA and TTFA ref­er­ee in­struc­tor, was re­spond­ing to claims by Wal­lace that the TTFA met on Mon­day and his ex­ec­u­tive had tak­en sev­er­al de­ci­sions, among which were to im­me­di­ate­ly stop trans­ac­tions on all TTFA bank ac­counts, in­clud­ing on­line trans­ac­tions; ini­ti­ate an au­dit of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nances and close the Home of Foot­ball un­til the nec­es­sary State au­thor­i­ty ap­provals and prop­er­ty in­sur­ance have been se­cured.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day if the new­ly-elect­ed of­fi­cers could make such de­ci­sions on be­half of the TTFA, Down­er said, “Ac­cord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion, on­ly the board can make de­ci­sions be­tween meet­ings. The board com­pris­es the of­fi­cers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from mem­bers as­so­ci­a­tions. The con­sti­tu­tion has noth­ing called an ex­ec­u­tive that can make de­ci­sions be­tween board meet­ings.

“The of­fi­cers are part of the board that makes the de­ci­sion. The of­fi­cers can­not make con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly le­gal de­ci­sions un­less they are part of the board.”

Down­er said at Sun­day’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM), on­ly two oth­er board mem­bers apart from the four elect­ed of­fi­cers were of­fered and in­duct­ed, which means there are on­ly six board mem­bers for this new term of of­fice. As a re­sult of this, he said a board meet­ing can­not be con­vened un­til the board gets a quo­rum of at least nine mem­bers. Un­til the oth­er mem­ber zones and as­so­ci­a­tions ap­point their rep­re­sen­ta­tives un­der ar­ti­cle 34 (9), Sec­tion (2) of the con­sti­tu­tion and sub­mit their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Down­er said the board can­not con­vene.

So far, the new TTFA board com­pris­es new­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent Wal­lace, vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, to­geth­er with the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Richard Quan Chan and Joseph Tay­lor of the T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion.

Board mem­bers from the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, TT Pro League, T&T Su­per League, Vet­er­an Foot­ballers Foun­da­tion of T&T (VF­FOTT) and the Women’s League of Foot­ball are yet to be pro­posed and in­duct­ed, Guardian Me­dia was told.

It has been re­port­ed that the TTFA has called a board meet­ing for next Tues­day but Down­er said such a meet­ing can on­ly hap­pen if there is a quo­rum of new­ly-ap­point­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, since the life of the last board, which was ap­point­ed in 2015, ex­pired dur­ing the AGM on Sun­day (No­vem­ber 24).

Down­er ex­plained, “The board has a life of four years. At Sun­day’s meet­ing, the meet­ing was to elect the pres­i­dent and three vice pres­i­dents and the mem­bers were sup­posed to sub­mit their board mem­ber can­di­dates to be in­duct­ed at that meet­ing and that did not hap­pen, al­though the mem­ber­ship was giv­en 40 days no­tice to do so. So now, each mem­ber has to con­vene a gen­er­al meet­ing to elect their board can­di­dates and sub­mit the names to the TTFA so that the board can be con­vened.”

Mean­while, a re­lease from the TTFA yes­ter­day said Wal­lace and his team of vice pres­i­dents, Tay­lor, Joseph-War­rick and Phillip met with se­nior men’s man­ag­er Richard Piper, head coach Den­nis Lawrence and head of the TTFA Elite Pro­gramme Gary St Rose at the FA’s head of­fice in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Piper was asked to sub­mit a 2019 man­ag­er’s re­port while Lawrence was asked to sub­mit a tech­ni­cal re­port, with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the 2019 Gold Cup and Na­tions League tour­na­ments. St Rose was di­rect­ed to sub­mit sev­er­al doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a 2019 re­port on the Elite Pro­gramme and a bud­get for 2020.

The re­lease al­so point­ed out that to date, they had found the TTFA to be in debt to the tune of TT$50 mil­lion.

The fol­low­ing mat­ters were al­so dis­cussed and de­ci­sions were tak­en:

1. The res­ig­na­tion of gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ca­ma­ra David was ac­cept­ed, ef­fec­tive 30 No­vem­ber. Pres­i­dent Wal­lace will rec­om­mend his re­place­ment to the TTFA board of di­rec­tors for ap­proval.

2. Le­gal cas­es, 13 in num­ber, and in­clud­ing the dis­pute over the So­ca War­riors brand with Sel­wyn Melville and the Shel­don Phillips mat­ter. Ac­tions were agreed to ad­dress these mat­ters. The of­fi­cers will meet on Fri­day with the as­so­ci­a­tion’s le­gal coun­sel in this re­gard.

3. The es­tab­lished debt dis­cov­ered to date is ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$50 mil­lion, in­clud­ing $1.7 mil­lion for the un­fin­ished Home of Foot­ball. This is ex­pect­ed to in­crease with out­stand­ing claims be­ing dis­cov­ered each day.

4. TTFA will host a quar­ter­ly me­dia round ta­ble to fa­cil­i­tate trans­paren­cy and cor­dial re­la­tions with the me­dia.

5. Meet­ings to dis­cuss de­vel­op­ment mat­ters with TTFA mem­bers be­gin on No­vem­ber 29 with South FA and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion on No­vem­ber 30.

6. A let­ter of con­grat­u­la­tion will be sent to Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior play­er Aubrey David for win­ning the CON­CA­CAF League with De­porti­vo Sapris­sa of Cos­ta Ri­ca and to Noah Pow­der, for­mer Un­der-20 play­er, for win­ning the USL Cham­pi­onship in the Unit­ed States with his club Re­al Mon­archs.

7. An as­so­ci­a­tion email do­main has been cre­at­ed to en­sure all TTFA cor­re­spon­dence re­mains the prop­er­ty of and ac­ces­si­ble to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

8. A let­ter must be sent to all TTFA mem­bers to sub­mit the name of their rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the TTFA Board of Di­rec­tors by De­cem­ber 6.

9. Pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions com­menced re­gard­ing the pro­gramme for the Na­tion­al Un­der-20 Women’s team par­tic­i­pa­tion in the CON­CA­CAF World Cup qual­i­fiers sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 2020.

10. The as­sess­ment of the TTFA League of Cham­pi­ons was com­plet­ed.