THE Guyana Football Federation (GFF) General Council is suppose to be the highest decision making forum for the Federation, but that’s according to the Constitution, which the world’s governing body for Football (FIFA) says must be reformed.

After lengthy dispute in the sport under the presidency of Christopher Matthias, FIFA stepped in and installed Guyana’s first Normalisation Committee, headed by local businessman Clinton Urling.

FIFA, through their Head of Member Associations Premo Cavaro and Head of Legal Affairs Marco Leal, announced the establishment of the committee via a press conference last year at the Pegasus Hotel.

Cavaro has said among the Committee’s duties are, to formulate a new constitution for the GFF and its affiliates and to run the day to day operations of the local governing body, including interfacing with stakeholders and attending FIFA and CONCACAF Meetings.

The FIFA official said that while the current constitution is not bad it needs to be improved and this is one area that the Committee will be looking at. He added that there will be big and deep changes in the manner in which football is governed in Guyana, informing that the installation of the Committee will pave the way for a new GFF that will advance the development of the game here.

In an interview with Chronicle Sport after the announcement of Jamaal Shabazz becoming Guyana’s head coach for the February 1 encounter against Barbados, Urling pointed out that “currently with the Normalisation Committee, there’s no General Council meeting until after we’ve done the constitutional reform and we have the General Council meeting which is the annual one; there’s no emergency one”.

Many among Guyana’s fragile football community had questioned the modus operandi of Urling’s led Normalisation Committee, with some calling it churlish, since they feel that the committee is completely overlooking the fact that regardless of the mandated Constitutional reform, until such is taken place, the General Council should’ve been embraced.

“We wouldn’t be calling any general council meeting or emergency meeting or anything like that from now until ma be after September. The Normalisation Committee is the GFF executive committee which FIFA appointed to straighten things out, which primarily is the constitution and running this office and supervising the elections,” Urling added.

At the top of the long list of priorities for the five-member GFF Normalisation Committee apart from managing the day-to-day activities of the country’s football will be to adopt the new constitution of the GFF; to amend the current one and to organise elections according to the new constitution.

“Early February, we’ll have a committee of no more than 15 persons sitting on that committee for two days and FIFA will handle that process and not the Normalisation Committee and after the two days, we’ll come out with a new Constitution, hopefully, and from then all our Member Associations’ constitution should mirror or fall in line,” Urling said when asked about when the constitutional reform will take place.

The current constitution is seen as one with contempt and its nostalgic reading of the game had brought the world’s leading sport into dispute among the affiliated member associations.

How the Normalisation Committee will go about making the historic reform is not yet known, with Urling pointing out “the approach to doing it in terms of how we’re going to our member associations, I can’t say presently; maybe we will hire a consultant to go around or we go as a committee, I’m not sure of the process”.

(By Rawle Toney)