Real Solid Action (RSA), the campaign team of Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) presidential candidate Raymond Anderson, says it has a duty to football to persist with contesting the elections in spite of its perceived discrepancies in the process.

Anderson, JFF first vice-president, will challenge incumbent Michael Ricketts at a JFF voting congress rescheduled for Sunday, March 17 in Hanover despite a number of issues RSA has cited for the election not to take place.

But RSA said in a press conference held on Thursday afternoon that although others would change their minds about continuing in the race, it has to contest the election because there are too many stakeholders depending on it.

“We have all these concerns,” said Dave Cameron, who is campaigning to be a JFF ordinary director on Anderson’s slate. “The FIFA stipulation says you can’t go into a court, but here we are in a situation where he [Anderson] is the current vice-president of the JFF and information is being withheld from him.”

This information regards the list of delegates approved to vote in the election, which Anderson says he, a JFF executive, has not seen despite it being a JFF matter in its election.

The election was previously set for Sunday, January 17 but was postponed for 28 days because of an injunction by the Supreme Court. This was because of an appeal by Patricia Garel that Beach Soccer Jamaica (BSJ), which she heads, was being disenfranchised as a delegate because the association could not be registered as a member of the JFF.

RSA alleges that JFF board members created what it describes as “two paper associations to compete with and take away the legitimate voting right of existing groups”. BSJ could not be registered as the governing body for local beach football because of the ratification of Beach Football Association of Jamaica (BFAJ) as an official member of the JFF, allowing the latter to hold the right of a vote. But RSA is now awaiting word on whether BSJ or BFAJ will be approved as a delegate. The Appeals Committee, to which the appeal was initially sent, says that decision lies not with it, but the Election Committee.

RSA is also waiting to hear a decision on the Jamaica Football Coaches’ Association and the Jamaica Football Referees’ Association, who are in a similar position to BSJ, with mirror bodies contesting their right to vote.

Anderson says he was told by JFF General Secretary Dennis Chung that the Election Committee says it does not believe in the ruling of the Appeals Committee on who should be allowed membership.

FIFA also stepped in to investigate the matter as its Ethics Code prohibits Government interference in its or its member associations’ affairs. Based on precedence (previous FIFA rulings), RSA’s members fear being banned from football should it go to court with an appeal.

“We have appealed to the Elections Committee, we appealed to FIFA, CFU (Caribbean Football Union), Concacaf, and we’ve had no responses. What next? What do we do?” Cameron asked.

Although Ricketts said recently that he was told by FIFA and Concacaf officials that they saw no discrepancies in the process to cause further delay to the elections, Anderson says he has received no official communication regarding this. He says the only document RSA has received from FIFA was the “cease and desist” order regarding the court injunction. He says this alienates him as a vice-president when he has a right to be privy to the communication between FIFA and the JFF.

“We could appeal again to the Appeals Committee, to say that they haven’t dealt with the ruling of our appeals, but what else do you do?” Cameron asked. “Apart from going to a court now, again to get an injunction, that the JFF has not abided by the constitution, and then all of us are then subject to potentially being banned from football.”

Anderson says going to court is not an option.

“We are here to now appeal to our delegates because we want to ensure that whatever we do now changes the whole landscape of football,” he said. “If we sit back and just relax and say things are not going as they should, and leave it at that and not appeal to our delegates — trying to get into office to correct all of these wrongs…

“As a vice-president of the JFF and not getting the response as we should, I don’t think we should really just leave the football as is, and say, ‘Well, nobody is answering us,’ we still have to go ahead because the delegates want the constitution to deal with that. The delegates, we owe that to them. History would be unkind to us if we just put our hands up and say we can’t bother because everybody is doing the wrong things.”