Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith has be ap­proached by the T&T Su­per League (TTSL) for ap­proval so that it can hold its An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) and Elec­tion of Of­fi­cers to be held at a venue that will fa­cil­i­tate the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic pro­to­cols as out­lined by the Min­istry of Health to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Guardian Me­dia Sports was in­formed of this de­vel­op­ment by two mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the TTSL on Tues­day, ahead of Sun­day's planned meet­ing in which for­mer na­tion­al stand­out Clay­tom Mor­ris will chal­lenge in­ter­im pres­i­dent Jame­son Rigues for the League's pres­i­den­cy.

The in­ter­im TTSL boss who took over fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Kei­th Look Loy on Oc­to­ber 16, has been at odds with the oth­er four board mem­bers- An­der­son Veronique, Ed­di­son Dean, Col­in Mur­ray, and George Joseph over a de­ci­sion to have the AGM and elec­tion held vir­tu­al­ly on Sun­day, say­ing, that while the AGM can go on, the elec­tion re­quired a process of a se­cret bal­lot which is stat­ed in the the League's con­sti­tu­tion and it is not pos­si­ble via the vir­tu­al plat­form.

The quar­tet has been plan­ning to use the forced ma­jeure clause high­light­ed in ar­ti­cle 58 of the by­laws, which they be­lieve will be ap­plic­a­ble due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Rigues, the for­mer Guaya Unit­ed man­ag­er and Su­per League's first vice pres­i­dent who was el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent a day af­ter Look Loy's ex­it, be­lieves the use of the clause will be an in­fringe­ment on the rights of the mem­ber­ship.

Rigues, told Guardian Me­dia Sports two weeks ago, that he sug­gest­ed to the board that a neu­tral venue be used and that he was go­ing in search of that venue.

How­ev­er, this was fol­lowed up by a let­ter to Grif­fith, seek­ing per­mis­sion for a venue that is COVID-19-ca­pa­ble of hold­ing the elec­tion.

Rigues said yes­ter­day that he was un­aware of whether ap­proval was giv­en for the meet­ing to take place, but was con­fi­dent it would have been giv­en.

Mean­while, at­tempts to reach Grif­fith on Tues­day for a re­sponse on the re­quest proved fu­tile as calls to his phone went unan­swered.

Apart from the Su­per League, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was al­so to act on a sim­i­lar re­quest from the mem­ber­ship of the North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA) who are des­per­ate to re­move the ex­ist­ing ex­ec­u­tive that was led by their for­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Har­ford, who has now al­so re­signed.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTSL con­sti­tu­tion, elec­tions are to be held be­fore De­cem­ber 31st this year, which means Rigues could be look­ing for a post­pone­ment or they will be us­ing an un­known fa­cil­i­ty.

Apart from the elec­tion be­ing held face-to-face, Rigues will al­so be seek­ing to ad­dress a sit­u­a­tion in which sev­en clubs sus­pend­ed since 2018, were done so with the ap­proval of the board.

The clubs- Cen­tral 500, De­fence Force, Harlem Strik­ers, Mara­bel­la Fam­i­ly Cri­sis Cen­tre, Phoenix, WASA FC, and the Youth Stars from To­ba­go, were sus­pend­ed for ei­ther be­ing non-com­pli­ant with the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion/FI­FA/CON­CA­CAF, or be­cause of fail­ure to reg­is­ter in time for com­pe­ti­tion in 2018 or 2019.

Rigues said af­ter do­ing his in­ves­ti­ga­tion he re­alised that there were no min­utes to show that the sus­pen­sion went be­fore the board for ap­proval, say­ing: "So as far as I am con­cerned the clubs were not sus­pend­ed. This could on­ly mean that the for­mer pres­i­dent in­struct­ed the sec­re­tary to write let­ters to the clubs say­ing they were sus­pend­ed."

Ac­cord­ing to Rigues: "Ac­cord­ing to the sus­pen­sion let­ter that was is­sued to those sev­en clubs on Jan­u­ary 27, that let­ter stat­ed that the board sus­pend­ed those mem­bers, how­ev­er, there are no min­utes what­so­ev­er, noth­ing in the min­utes to state that that was an agen­da item to show that it was dis­cussed at that lev­el."

He added: "When I look at the min­utes of Jan­u­ary 20th, which were the min­utes pri­or to that sus­pen­sion let­ter, there was noth­ing in the min­utes, no dis­cus­sion what­so­ev­er re­lat­ed to the sus­pen­sion of those mem­bers. So the board couldn't have made a de­ci­sion to sus­pend those mem­bers, so it's very strange to me who sus­pend­ed those mem­bers. The League sec­re­tary would have sent out a no­ti­fi­ca­tion to these mem­bers re­lat­ed to the sus­pen­sion. I as­sume he had been act­ing on be­half of the in­struc­tion of the for­mer pres­i­dent, how­ev­er that was not brought to the board for a de­ci­sion to be made. Be­cause I for one would have been against that de­ci­sion. It would have had to go to a vote and the vote would have been 5-4 and one against be­cause Jame­son Rigues would have al­ways been against that de­ci­sion."

Should Rigues have his way, the sus­pen­sion of the clubs will be an agen­da item at the AGM when­ev­er it is held. It could see the clubs be­ing re­in­stat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly and be­ing al­lowed to vote at the elec­tions.

Mean­while, Joseph, the Bethel Unit­ed man­ag­er who is one of five mem­bers on the board, said: "Yes there was a board meet­ing where that sus­pen­sion came up and the board de­cide too, as the rule says, sus­pend­ed them tem­porar­i­ly and then the gen­er­al meet­ing will make the de­ci­sion if to up­hold the sus­pen­sion or re­verse it at the next gen­er­al meet­ing."

Ac­cord­ing to Joseph: "The next gen­er­al meet­ing did come up in the ear­ly part of 2019 but mem­bers felt that it was not the end of the sea­son or the end of the two-year cy­cle for most of the teams, be­cause when you miss two con­sec­u­tive years ac­cord­ing to the TTFA rule you are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pelled, but they said they will de­fer it. So there was a de­ci­sion to de­fer the de­ci­sion un­til the end of the sea­son, which would have been fin­ished in De­cem­ber. Sub­se­quent to that we had no meet­ing be­tween that pe­ri­od, so the mat­ter could not have come up for dis­cus­sion."