PSL elections dilemma

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
DELEGATES from the country’s flagship football league, the Premier Soccer League, will on September 9 elect their chairman who will lead the organisation for the next four years in polls that will see Caps United’s Farai Jere and Lovemore Matikinyidze of Triangle facing off.

Lifa Ncube of Chicken Inn is unchallenged for the post of vice chairman.
In view of the need to align all football statutes with those of the national association and indeed the continental and world football, there is an urgent need for the PSL clubs, who make up membership of the league, to also align their laws with those of the league, especially the terms of office for
leadership positions.
This will prevent a situation where someone is elected to the post of PSL chairman only to be removed on a technicality before the expiry of his four-year mandate in the PSL simply because his term at the club has run out.

Scenarios that quickly come to mind is the Highlanders term of office for the chairman which is three years and in the event that the Bosso chairman is elected PSL boss, which is his constitutional right as a governor, and he somehow fails to retain his position at the club, it means he will automatically have to relinquish his post in the league, throwing the country’s flagship football league into a leadership crisis.

The same danger also applies to persons coming from clubs whose leadership is appointed by company shareholders of management. Such candidates don’t have their fate in their hands because organisations deploy their employees as and when they want.

Now disbanded PSL side, How Mine, is a classic case where its chairmen were changed almost in the blink of an eye as and when the company management deemed fit and it does not follow that if a club changes its leadership then the new man will automatically assume any other duties that the predecessor occupied in the league, especially an elected position like the chairmanship.

While the PSL statutes do not bar anyone from running for chairmanship as long as one is a governor, clubs need to seriously look at the above scenario and make due changes in the statutes that may, for instance see clubs, not individuals in charge of those clubs, being elected and that will then make it mandatory that whosoever replaces the club chairperson, also automatically assumes the office of the PSL chairpersonship.