Jones feels game can recover
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — President of the Barbados Football Association Ronald Jones said the game in the region can recover from the cash-for-votes scandal with an “effective leadership regime”.
Jones, the Barbados Minister of Education and Human Resource Development, felt it was possible for the region to regain respect in the eyes of the world after the scandal that undermined the Caribbean Football Union (CFU).
“It’s sad for Caribbean football,” Jones told the Sunday Sun newspaper. “We now have to work through one of the most difficult circumstances.
“A lot of the leaders of Caribbean football, who have served football well over the years, have been suspended; so we actually have to go back to the drawing board to see how we can resurrect football and regain our integrity.”
The cash-for-votes scandal involved Mohammed bin Hammam, a candidate for the post of president of the sport’s world governing body FIFA, allegedly offering US$40,000 cash gifts to delegates of the CFU attending a meeting in Trinidad last June.
The scandal led to bin Hammam being banned for life, and CFU and CONCACAF president Austin ‘Jack’ Warner, a FIFA vice-president, resigning in disgrace.
FIFA also handed down bans to a number of CFU officials, including vice-president Colin Klass, the president of the Guyana Football Association, and Horace Burrell, the president of the Jamaica Football Federation, who was seeking to become CFU and CONCACAF president.
Several others were either fined heavily or severely reprimanded for their parts in the scandal.
“Football generates massive amounts of money globally, and there is always going to be the temptation to use it as a means of manipulating processes,” said Jones.
“It is unfortunate the Caribbean became the hub of FIFA’s efforts to cleanse itself from the various allegations of the past; but we need to move beyond it.”
Jones also said he was not surprised that BFA General Secretary David Hinds and board member Mark Forde, an international referee, had been cleared of wrongdoing, after they had attended the Trinidad meeting.
“This was something I have been saying up front, but nobody wanted to believe me,” he said.
“My position was to remain silent [officially] because I knew their names would have been cleared.”
Interestingly, Warner seemed to endorse Jones as a possible future FIFA President during the Trinidad meeting, but the minister was unwilling to comment.
