The election for president of the national football governing body, postponed multiple times due to procedural issues, has been rescheduled for Feb. 26 (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Korea Bizwire) - The election for president of the national football governing body, postponed multiple times due to procedural issues, has been rescheduled for Feb. 26.
The Korea Football Association (KFA) announced late Monday night that its new election management committee had settled on the new date after its first meeting held earlier in the day.
Further details of the new election day will be determined following the committee’s next meeting Saturday, the KFA added.
All three candidates will remain in the race: Chung Mong-gyu, who is going for his fourth term; Huh Jung-moo, former head coach of the South Korean men’s national team; and Shin Moon-sun, former player and television commentator who teaches sports data analysis at Myongji University in Seoul. The KFA said it will not accept any new candidates.
Chung’s status had been up in the air recently, with the deadline approaching for the KFA to act on a demand by the sports ministry to penalize Chung based on the findings of the ministry’s monthslong probe into the KFA’s operations last year. However, the KFAannounced Saturday it had filed an administrative suit at the Seoul Central District Court on Jan. 21 to nullify the ministry’s demand to at least suspend Chung.
While awaiting the court’s ruling, the KFA has decided to withhold its decision on Chung and allowed him to stay in the election. If Chung had been suspended, he would have been ruled ineligible.
The election was set to take place Jan. 8 but was postponed on the eve of that day when the Seoul Central District Courtgranted an injunction filed by Huh to stop the proceedings. Huh had raised issues with the composition of the KFA’s election management committee and questioned its impartiality, and also claimed the KFA deliberately tried to exclude a certain group of voters from the electoral college.
On Jan. 9, the KFA announced the election would be held Jan. 23, but both Huh and Shin said they had never agreed to the new schedule. The election was then postponed indefinitely when all eight members of the election management committee resignedJan. 10.
The new election committee is made up of 11 individuals: three former officials of the National Election Commission (NEC), three from the legal field, three from the media and two from academia. Park Yeong-soo, former NEC secretary-general, was named the head of the committee Monday.
Per KFA rules, at least two-thirds of the election committee members must be independent figures who have no affiliation with the football body. The committee said 10 of its 11 new members were brought in from the outside, based on recommendations by organizations with no ties to the KFA.
The electoral college will be assembled in a random draw and will include officials of regional football bodies, active players, coaches and referees. The pool will be made up of those who had signed their privacy consent forms during a three-week period that ended Sunday.
When granting Huh’s injunction request in January, the Seoul court pointed out that the KFA committee had violated its election rules by asking people selected for the electoral college to sign their privacy forms instead of asking all eligible voters to sign them before the random draw.
The election committee said it picked Feb. 26 out of consideration for the match schedules of players, coaches and officials.
The new K League season kicks off Feb. 15, and the league stage for the Asian Football Confederation Champions League Elite tournament will resume next Tuesday and wrap up Feb. 19, with the knockout stage set to start March 4.
(Yonhap)
