AFP - The Iraqi Football Association (IFA) gained a new chief on Saturday, in an election in which the country's football establishment won over a candidate unofficially backed by the government.
Najeh Hmoud's victory over Falah Hassan is expected to end two years of paralysis and problems with world football's governing body, FIFA.
Hmoud, the IFA's deputy chief, won with 48 votes to 26 for the only other contestant, Falah Hassan. Three other contestants who had announced their candidacy on Friday later pulled out for reasons that remained unclear.
The election came after the IFA's disputed chief Hussein Said announced his resignation Monday, saying he was doing so in order to allow the association to get on with its work.
The election pitted Hmoud, who was backed by the country's football establishment, against Hassan, who was unofficially backed by the youth ministry, which is close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
Although FIFA insists that football must be free of politics, in Iraq politics permeates nearly everything, especially football.
There were 75 members on the general committee with voting rights, but not all of them cast a ballot.
"I think the experience I gained from working as the association's deputy over the past several years (since 2004) are enough to give me the win," Hmoud said the day before the election.
"The general committee knows what I've done and what I want to do in the future, and I think I will win the elections because I have a large number of supporters inside the committee." he told AFP.
The election came after Said's resignation.
For the past two years he had been locked in a conflict with Maliki's Shiite-dominated government, which had opposed him at every turn for his past ties with the regime of Saddam Hussein, who was ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion.
Said had served as a deputy to Saddam's younger son, Uday, but has denied he was ever a member of the Iraqi dictator's Baath party.
Last August, FIFA gave Iraqi football chiefs a one-year deadline to settle their differences after elections last July to the IFA board fell into disarray.
FIFA lifted its suspension on Iraq on March 19, 2010, after a solution was reportedly found in the spat.
But about a week before a new IFA election was due to take place, soldiers sought to arrest Said and three other senior officials on corruption charges.
Two rival general assemblies were then held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and in the northern city of Arbil on July 24, prompting the IFA to postpone elections of a new executive committee.
World football chiefs had suspended the IFA in November 2009 after Iraqi police seized control of the association's offices and its board was dissolved on charges of links to Saddam.
FIFA then demanded the reinstatement of the association's executive committee and threatened to ban Iraq from international matches over "governmental interference in the electoral process" of the IFA.
Iraq was also briefly sidelined from international football in May 2008, after the government dissolved the national Olympic Committee a year after the national side won the Asian Cup.
Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20110618-...ign=DTN+Iran:#
Najeh Hmoud's victory over Falah Hassan is expected to end two years of paralysis and problems with world football's governing body, FIFA.
Hmoud, the IFA's deputy chief, won with 48 votes to 26 for the only other contestant, Falah Hassan. Three other contestants who had announced their candidacy on Friday later pulled out for reasons that remained unclear.
The election came after the IFA's disputed chief Hussein Said announced his resignation Monday, saying he was doing so in order to allow the association to get on with its work.
The election pitted Hmoud, who was backed by the country's football establishment, against Hassan, who was unofficially backed by the youth ministry, which is close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
Although FIFA insists that football must be free of politics, in Iraq politics permeates nearly everything, especially football.
There were 75 members on the general committee with voting rights, but not all of them cast a ballot.
"I think the experience I gained from working as the association's deputy over the past several years (since 2004) are enough to give me the win," Hmoud said the day before the election.
"The general committee knows what I've done and what I want to do in the future, and I think I will win the elections because I have a large number of supporters inside the committee." he told AFP.
The election came after Said's resignation.
For the past two years he had been locked in a conflict with Maliki's Shiite-dominated government, which had opposed him at every turn for his past ties with the regime of Saddam Hussein, who was ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion.
Said had served as a deputy to Saddam's younger son, Uday, but has denied he was ever a member of the Iraqi dictator's Baath party.
Last August, FIFA gave Iraqi football chiefs a one-year deadline to settle their differences after elections last July to the IFA board fell into disarray.
FIFA lifted its suspension on Iraq on March 19, 2010, after a solution was reportedly found in the spat.
But about a week before a new IFA election was due to take place, soldiers sought to arrest Said and three other senior officials on corruption charges.
Two rival general assemblies were then held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and in the northern city of Arbil on July 24, prompting the IFA to postpone elections of a new executive committee.
World football chiefs had suspended the IFA in November 2009 after Iraqi police seized control of the association's offices and its board was dissolved on charges of links to Saddam.
FIFA then demanded the reinstatement of the association's executive committee and threatened to ban Iraq from international matches over "governmental interference in the electoral process" of the IFA.
Iraq was also briefly sidelined from international football in May 2008, after the government dissolved the national Olympic Committee a year after the national side won the Asian Cup.
Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20110618-...ign=DTN+Iran:#