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Liberia Goes to CAS in Bid to Overturn Rules that Favour African Soccer Head Hayatou

Football - 28 Nov 2012 - The Liberia Football Association, the governing body for soccer in the west African country, has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn new rules on the presidency of the Confederation of African Football, which benefit incumbent Issa Hayatou.

Cameroon’s Hayatou, the head of CAF since 1987, is the sole candidate in presidential elections due to take place in Morocco next March.

His position has been strengthened by controversial rules passed in September which laid down that only voting members of the CAF executive committee could stand for the presidency.

This excluded the likes of Jacques Anouma of Ivory Coast, like Hayatou a member of the executive committee of Fifa, soccer’s international governing body, and Danny Jordaan, the South African official who was head of the organising committee for the 2010 World Cup.

The rules are due to take effect next Monday but the Liberia FA is seeking an interim verdict from Lausanne-based CAS to block the amendments until a full hearing is held.

In a statement, CAS said that CAF “has been formally notified of the appeals and has been invited to file an answer to the requests for provisional measures.”

Liberia is challenging the new rules on technical grounds, claiming that CAF did not adhere to a regulation requiring it to provide 90 days’ notice to change the statutes and that the west African country was not aware of the rules being ratified by Fifa.

The rule changes, which were proposed by Algeria, were supported by 44 votes to 6 although the Liberia FA claims that this was the result of intimidation.

The association’s president Hassa Musa Bility told BBC Sport: “We believe we have strong support but the organisation [CAF] is run on fear tactics. It is brave for anyone to stand up and question the way African football is run.”

Hayatou is a Fifa vice president and a member of the International Olympic Committee but received a reprimand from the latter body last year for a ‘conflict of interest’ when he received a payment worth SFr24,700 ($26,480) from the now-defunct sports agency ISL in 1995.

Sportcal