Stephenson

PRESIDENT OF the Kingston and St. Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) Ambassador A.B. Stewart Stephenson said he did not propose a new motion to bring this year's Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) voting election forward, but instead wanted it to fall in a World Cup year.

In an earlier report by The Gleaner, Stephenson was quoted as saying that he filed a motion to bring the voting congress due in November, four months earlier.

"The motion is not a unique or novel thing. This is something that has been discussed for some time. It came up in the 'minutes' and I was asked to continue to articulate the principle," Stephenson told The Gleaner yesterday.

"They would move a voting congress for future voting congresses to a World Cup year. The World Cup year was last year and they are having a voting congress in November. So if you want to implement going forward November that man would have three years where he was supposed to have a four-year cycle," Stephenson explained.

"What we have done was ask the congress to discuss the possibility of moving future voting congress to a World Cup year so that such a congress would be held in any of the months after the World Cup final. It would give people an opportunity to come into office and take the thing straight to a World Cup.

"The principle is this, a number of administrations including the current one would have found that they came into office in the middle of the preparations for World Cup year and they wouldn't have been able to stamp their impression on the strategy and focus..."

He continued: "This is not a World Cup year so it is not affecting the current congress scheduled for November. But it certainly could have been considered. It is the date of implementation that is the issue.

Need to agree

"We need to get past the principle: do we agree or not that we want to give future administrations a proper opportunity to develop strategies or so going forward to the next World Cup rather than what happened in the past with new administrations coming in the middle and breaking up programmes that have started and some complaining that they didn't get enough time."