PLE REJECTS EFA NEW CONSTITUTION OFFER

MBABANE – It’s a constitutional collision.

The Eswatini Football Association (EFA) and Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) are not in agreement with the latter’s constitution. Even before both parties’ current Executive Committees came on board last year, the EFA led by then President Adam ‘Bomber’ Mthethwa had once proposed a Management Committee (MC) runs the PLE as opposed to the current setup of the Executive Committee and Board of governors (BoGs) structure. However, that did not happen.

It has since been established that the PLE executive committee led by PLE Chairman Mark Carmichael’s bid to have their main statute, the constitution amended has failed. The PLE took its recommended amendments to the EFA for approval as mandated by the BoGs in their elective assembly last year. However, the response from the EFA has not approved the proposed amendments, instead gave them two options. The PLE executive committee reported back to the BoGs in the recent special general meeting early this month at Sigwaca House. The report was clear that the amendments had not been approved.

Speculation

“The MC issue remains speculation or should I say its fears by the BoGs that the PLE structures may cease existence if the EFA is allowed to craft a new constitution for the PLE. There’s nothing official about that save for the fact that BoGs recently turned down the offer for a new constitution by EFA,” claimed one source within the BoGs. It was also gathered that the EFA’s response gave the PLE two options after clearly not going ahead with the anticipated amendments. The options were between letting EFA come up with an all new PLE Constitution and empowering the PLE with a Constitutional Workshop.

“The BoGs obviously opted for the workshop as they want to understand what it is that EFA is not content about in the statute and be able to turn it around than letting the mother body do it on their behalf,” explained one of the teams’ BoGs who attended the workshop at Sigwaca House on Friday.
The workshop got underway in the morning with PLE Executive Committee members and registered PLE BoGs in attendance.  The PLE had wanted a few amendments made in the statute like their elections among other things.

Rejected

“All in all the BoGs rejected the new Constitution offer and asked that we get a workshop on the subject to be able to fix the statute on our own and a workshop the EFA gave to us,” said another close source. The EFA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Frederick Mngomezulu conducted the workshop along with Noel Mabuza. “There was really nothing much that we didn’t already know and it turned out in the end our statute needs just a few additions here and there and that we can fix even before our AGM. It was also noted that some of the things complained about are merely omissions which out of five one is the fault and even the EFA Constitution was put under scrutiny as we indicated theirs also had same challenges as ours,” an impeccable source alluded while adding that Mngomezulu acknowledged the similarities but explained their constitution was with the world football governing mother body, Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA). PLE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kenneth Makhanya affirmed the workshop and said the PLE Executive Committee and BoGs’ attendance was impressive.

Chronology

“The matter is just as you put it. The BoGs opted for the workshop and it was held on Friday. It is now about us working on the few sections and articles that were picked up as we found that some articles were wrongly inserted, others were missing in the draft while the chronology was also not in line with the standards of FIFA statute. We just need to rephrase, correct and add here and there before we can have our AGM on August 13,” he said. On the EFA statute also having same challenges in some of the sections, Makhanya said FIFA was already looking at the EFA constitution and it would be refined as explained by Mngomezulu to the BoGs and PLE Executive Committee. EFA Communications and Marketing Officer Muzi Radebe also said while he was not around, he was aware about it, but would not know how it progressed.

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