Following our publication of analysis of Gambia Football Federation GFF’s term limits and eligibility procedure for next year’s national elections, the leader of Team Restore Confidence, Sadibou Kamaso has reacted with an interpretation of the law on the matter. In a write up shared with The Standard, Kamaso said:
“The issue of who cannot run in the next GFF elections” as captured in The Standard, in my opinion deserves comment and elucidation most especially on the interpretation of the articles on eligibility.
Article 34.1 of The GFF Constitution which touches on the composition of the Executive provides as follows, until its amendment in the Extra Ordinary:
34.1 The GFF shall be governed by an Executive Committee consisting of the following (15) fifteen members-
a) The President;
b) The First Vice President;
c) The Second Vice President;
d) The Third Vice President;
e) Seven other members who shall represent each of the Regional Football Associations; and four other members, two of whom shall be women and one of whom shall be a retired referee.
Article 34.2 goes further to explicitly give clarifications as to how members of the executive shall be elected and same provides as follows:
34.2 The members of the Executive Committee shall be elected individually by the General Assembly. Every candidate in the election of Executive Committee members must be proposed by at least one member. Members of the Regional Football Associations shall be elected by the Regions and confirmed by the GFF General Assembly.
The above was the composition of the GFF executive until the 2022 Extraordinary General Assembly when an amendment was made to have the president of the Women’s Football Association to automatically become 4th VP upon being voted into office by the women’s football stakeholders. It is therefore clear that the composition of the GFF Executive is made up of the above irrespective of where they are voted from.
It is therefore clear from the above that it is the election of the RFA presidents at their respective regions that gives them a right to sit on the GFF Executive. Their constitutions may be silent on a two-term limit but the GFF Constitution supersedes theirs and so they cannot serve on the GFF executive more than two terms even if they serve ten terms at their regional level. What this does is either a region who continues to vote a particular president at their region for more than two terms loses its representation at the GFF Executive table, or adjust to the term limit.
In 2018, out of pressure from the stakeholders, the GFF Executive agreed and presented a proposal for amendment to the General Assembly for a two-term limit even though the proposal clearly indicated that the 2014-2018 term wouldn’t count. This meant the two-term limit started in 2018-2022 and thus ended in the 2022-2026 term limit.
Article 35.1 of the GFF Constitution in relation to term of office states as follows:
35.1 All members shall be elected to serve in office for a term of four years and shall be eligible for re-election only once after after being elected. However the current term of the current executive shall not be counted.
The above clause clearly mentions ALL members of the GFF Executive irrespective of where and how they got voted into office. The CAF statutes for instance has a term limit but theirs indicates that exceeding a term limit in one position does not prevent one from serving in a different position.
No matter the rule of interpretation applied to interpret the above clauses in the GFF constitution, the two term limit applies to every single voted member of the GFF executive who have served two terms, and not just the president and his vice presidents’.
