Ke­iron Ed­wards, a beat­en pres­i­den­tial can­di­date at last Sun­day's T&T Su­per League AGM and Elec­tion of Of­fi­cers, is call­ing for fresh elec­tions soon.

His call comes from a T&TFA let­ter sent the day be­fore the TTSL elec­tion (Sep­tem­ber 18) in which it was stat­ed that sev­en clubs that were said to be sus­pend­ed by the TTFA at a 2018 Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) were nev­er sus­pend­ed.

De­fence Force, Cen­tral 500 FC, Harlem Strik­ers FC, Mara­bel­la FCC, 1976 Phoenix, WASA FC and the Youth Stars were giv­en ob­serv­er sta­tus at the elec­tion Sun­day but were not al­lowed to vote. They were even­tu­al­ly re­in­stat­ed as the last item of the meet­ing agen­da.

Ed­wards who was de­feat­ed 8-2 by Prison of­fi­cer Lee Davis in the fi­nal round of vot­ing, de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as trag­ic, say­ing all mem­bers should have im­me­di­ate­ly been re­in­stat­ed with full vot­ing rights, up­on the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's let­ter which cleared them of be­ing sus­pend­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day Ed­wards al­so took a swipe at the way Sun­day's vir­tu­al process was con­duct­ed: "It is a gen­uine fact that the clubs were de­prived the rights as bonafide mem­bers to vote.

At the AGM, the busi­ness aris­ing from the pre­vi­ous AGM would have brought in­to ques­tion the sus­pen­sion of the clubs and they not be­ing al­lowed to vote by the Board of the Su­per League for the com­ing elec­tion.

When that dis­cus­sion was be­ing had, some­one raised a mo­tion to de­fer item Z, which is the busi­ness aris­ing from the AGM and re­ferred it to agen­da item K, which the con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for.

The con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for, if on the agen­da there is a need to amend it, you have to put it to a vote, which was had, but the prob­lem that oc­curred was that you need a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty for an agen­da item to be de­ferred or be brought for­ward, which the chair­man of the meet­ing did not ac­quire.

At that time the mem­ber for Pe­tit Val­ley then sought to have the mat­ter sort­ed out be­fore the elec­tion, but the chair­man of the meet­ing said that a vote was al­ready cast and it was vic­to­ri­ous when in truth and fact, it was not vic­to­ri­ous. I be­lieve it was not done in any mal­ice by the chair­man be­cause he just was not in­formed, how­ev­er, a wrong was done and it should be cor­rect­ed."

New pres­i­dent Davis said the mat­ter seems to be a con­sti­tu­tion­al one, but de­clared that no one rail­road­ed the meet­ing or tried to over­turn any de­ci­sion.

"Based on the con­sti­tu­tion that the clubs were sus­pend­ed by the TTFA for what­ev­er rea­son, the next AGM would then hear the sus­pen­sion mat­ter and ei­ther con­tin­ue the sus­pen­sion or not. I would as­sume that the AGM that brought them to be sus­pend­ed was du­ly done.

If the SL has their own pro­ce­dures, I don't know if the TTFA could over-turn the sus­pen­sion un­less they ap­peal to TTFA and I don't know if that was done," Davis ex­plained.

The TTFA on Au­gust 27 via its gen­er­al sec­re­tary Amiel Mo­hammed, re­spond­ed to a let­ter from the TTSL sec­re­tary Pe­ter Thomas that the sev­en clubs were sus­pend­ed. Mo­hammed in his let­ter said his as­so­ci­a­tion had no doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port the claims that clubs were sus­pend­ed, and re­quest­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion from the TTSL to sup­port its claim- that the clubs were sus­pend­ed.

Thomas told Guardian Me­dia Sports two weeks ago, that the min­utes of the TTFA AGM of April 2018 were sent.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing more than two weeks of de­lib­er­a­tions the TTFA sub­mit­ted its fi­nal re­sponse, not­ing: " The TTFA was asked to con­sid­er whether sus­pen­sions and ex­pul­sions are in ef­fect for mem­bers of the TTSL. Af­ter care­ful re­view and analy­sis, the TTFA holds the view that the sus­pen­sion and or ex­pul­sions of TTFA mem­bers can­not be sup­port­ed at this time.

In com­ing to this con­clu­sion the TTFA took in­to ac­count the pro­vi­sions of Ar­ti­cles 14 and 15 of the TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion and the min­utes of the 21st April 2018, 24th No­vem­ber 2018, 12th Sep­tem­ber 2019 and the 24th of No­vem­ber 2019 Gen­er­al Meet­ings in par­tic­u­lar.

Ac­cord­ing to Ar­ti­cles 14(2) of the con­sti­tu­tion, pro­vi­sion­al sus­pen­sions must be con­firmed at the sub­se­quent Gen­er­al Meet­ing by two-thirds of the mem­bers present and el­i­gi­ble to vote, fail­ing which such sus­pen­sions are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly lift­ed. The sus­pen­sions were not con­firmed in the man­ner pre­scribed.

The mo­tion passed at the 21st April 2018 Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing called for ex­pul­sions to take ef­fect for non-com­pli­ant mem­bers by 31st De­cem­ber 2018. On an ini­tial re­view, the mo­tion was found to be of du­bi­ous con­struc­tion and in­valid by virtue, of it not be­ing pre­scribed ac­cord­ing to ac­cept­ed rules of draft­ing (Robert's Rules of Or­der Part 1). Al­so giv­en con­sid­er­a­tion was the fail­ure of the TTFA at that time to con­sti­tute fol­low-up ac­tion on the mo­tion to ex­pel and al­low­ing the Mem­bers in ques­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a com­pe­ti­tion and oth­er sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties or­gan­ised by the TTFA, as sup­port­ed by the 12th Sep­tem­ber 2019 EoGM Min­utes, mak­ing it seem­ing­ly un­just for the TTFA to ini­ti­ate fol­low-up ac­tion now."

For fresh elec­tions to take place, an EGM could be had in 30 days, ac­cord­ing to the by-laws of the Su­per League. Ed­wards said: " If more than 50 per­cent of the mem­bers sign an EGM let­ter call­ing for fresh elec­tions, the board has to con­vene that meet­ing.

If it is not con­vened af­ter 30 days, the mem­bers, who called for the meet­ing could con­vene it them­selves. And if in that meet­ing a re­quest is made for fresh elec­tions, they have 21 days to go through the process of hav­ing fresh elec­tions."