Elections ‘11, part three: The Infamous Incumbent?

By Soraya Soemadiredja, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Final part in AFR’s FIFA Election coverage preview.

Joseph S. Blatter has been in charge of world football since 1998. He wants to be in charge for only four more years and promises to leave after this. In the time he has been in charge, he has seen countless FA and Confederation heads rotate, three World Cups on three continents, and far too many scandals come and go, but has an uncanny knack for batting away every criticism of his tenure from left, right and centre field.

Some of his more noteable accomplishments and faux pas include: publicly announcing he believed that Women’s Football would benefit from women playing in shorter shorts, bringing the World Cup to the African continent and thereby truly making the “world’s game” global, bringing FIFA a 1.2 billion USD in reserves, as well as being implicated in the multi-million dollar ISL sports management bribery case.

So, have we seen the best he’s got to offer, or does he have more up his sleeve for his next four years?

Blatter believes that his track record as head of world football’s governing body, a body that oversees close to 50 individual tournaments worldwide for football and has 208 members, more than the United Nation, merits his re-election. In reaction to critics, in particular his only challenger, Blatter has strongly rejected the idea that FIFA needs revolution or restructuring. His goal, according to his manifesto, is “the continuity, stability and reliability of the current system”.

He aims to provide 1 billion USD for football development in his GOAL Programme, throughout the four years and include cash handouts from Brazil 2015. Considering that the football world is riddled with inequalities, including, crucially, financial ones, this is important for increasing the development of the game in developing countries and emerging economies. Under Blatter, FIFA has already invested in 1.6 billion USD for development programmes.

Blatter wants to address the negative challenges that have threatened football, including major issues like corruption, world wide match-fixing, racism in football, and other important issues. And on that note, the scandals over corruption in football officials and sports’ governing bodies have not escaped Blatter’s attention in his electoral platform. He claims it is one of the “biggest enemies of football”.

And finally, Blatter wants to further democratise the power structures of world football. Power should not be devolved and decentralised to the Confederations, but instead, strengthen the autonomy of the member nations.

Blatter has been in charge since 1998. There are a vast number of issues that many critics have brought up time and again, and under his leadership FIFA have notoriously been unable to handle critics in the best PR way possible. The main issues that Blatter acknowledge as threatening football have not just spontaneously come to the forefront in the recent times, and are what FIFA’s main critics point to and believe the source of which is the inherent inefficiency of the footballing system under FIFA. He has been in charge for thirteen years, and the system has so far been unresponsive toward genuine calls for change.

Perhaps it is a foreign concept to some people that throwing money at a problem does not make it go away. It remains to be seen whether or not this 25 million per year will actually reach those who need it the most, given the lack of institutional integrity of these association whom FIFA have entrusted to with this money, as can be evidenced by a whole host of corruption in FIFA funds at the national level. It is, however, a great marketing tool to attract just the right and most influential Executive Committee members to convince that there is no need for a change in the top for there to be a great improvement in all aspects of the game.

What should not be overlooked is that in Blatter’s claim to want to apply zero-tolerance to illegal acts like corruption, match-fixing and doping, he should probably start with himself and those closest around him. It is hard to take his call to end corruption in football seriously when he and the organisation he heads is highly undermined by his consistent reliance and relationship of members of FIFA who have been involved in corruption scandals involving football on many levels, such as Warner, head of CONCACAF, in Trinidad and Tobago, and the recent World Cup bid scandals, of whom some of the Ex-Co members, are close allies. Interestingly, his calls to clean up FIFA only apply to members of FIFA and FAs whom he no longer has any use for, when he feels their mutual “loyalty” no longer benefits him, they will get the axe faster than those who keep him in power. He is the gatekeeper into the elite cabal in charge of world football. If you help him, it does not matter how many actual crimes you are indicted for or put on trial for, in any country, but you have to keep it up. On the other hand, pose a threat to him, for example, a challenge to his election, as Bin Hammam is doing, and he’ll unleash whatever forces he can control, such as the FIFA Ethics Committee, to undermine your position and break off ties with you, however useful or close you were to him.

Blatter’s desire to keep football power within the ranks of the FIFA elite is understandable given the history of his tenure. While it will definitely appeal to the voting constituency, the voting member nations, that Blatter wants to give them more autonomy than they would have previously had in the past, and under his watch, some Football Associations are more equal than others, and that those lucky enough to have members on the Executive Committee have, potentially, the most power of all. And given the highly differentiated social, political and economic conditions of all 208 member nations, FIFA does not have highly specialised knowledge on every single one to be able to address issues that arise, and thus, the importance of the often overlooked Confederations should come into play.

Whether or not his comments, like his previous 12 years in the office, have impressed us or not, what seems to be obvious to everybody as the campaigns have gone on is that Blatter is a formidable figure. While Blatter’s original plan, and many others’ expectations, was to stand for re-election unopposed, Bin Hammam spanner in the gears, but doesn’t seem very likely, according to observers, to change Blatter’s tight grip for another four years on the FIFA presidency. Despite England’s abstention, the number of votes he is expected to win is probably not too far off, if not completely spot on, from his own prediction of being able to win two-thirds of the FIFA Members.

Finally, according to Blatter (channeling Nostradamus, surely), if he is not re-elected on the first of June, the football world will fall into a “black hole”. So, member nations, in order not to be sucked into another dimension or causing “irreversible damage” to the ‘world’s game’ should probably take note of this dire warning that, without him, the world as we know it will be destroyed.

Given the recent developments, what do you think will happen on the first of June with these presidential elections? What do you think about Blatter’s possible four more years? Has it really not been all that bad for FIFA? Or will it make no difference whatsoever to the inherent problems that FIFA and world football have had, whether or not Blatter stays or goes?