TTFA General Secretary resigns

How­ev­er, Os­mond Down­er, one of the ar­chi­tects of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) con­sti­tu­tion, says there is cur­rent­ly no TTFA board and on­ly this body can make tru­ly bind­ing de­ci­sions. This is be­cause the mem­bers did not un­der­take the process to ap­point a full board dur­ing Sun­day’s AGM.

Down­er made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he sought to clar­i­fy what de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­ers the new­ly-elect­ed of­fi­cers of the TTFA un­der William Wal­lace now pos­sess.

Down­er, a for­mer FI­FA and TTFA ref­er­ee in­struc­tor, was re­spond­ing to claims by Wal­lace that the TTFA met on Mon­day and his ex­ec­u­tive had tak­en sev­er­al de­ci­sions, among which were to im­me­di­ate­ly stop trans­ac­tions on all TTFA bank ac­counts, in­clud­ing on­line trans­ac­tions; ini­ti­ate an au­dit of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nances and close the Home of Foot­ball un­til the nec­es­sary State au­thor­i­ty ap­provals and prop­er­ty in­sur­ance have been se­cured.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day if the new­ly-elect­ed of­fi­cers could make such de­ci­sions on be­half of the TTFA, Down­er said, “Ac­cord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion, on­ly the board can make de­ci­sions be­tween meet­ings. The board com­pris­es the of­fi­cers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from mem­bers as­so­ci­a­tions. The con­sti­tu­tion has noth­ing called an ex­ec­u­tive that can make de­ci­sions be­tween board meet­ings.

“The of­fi­cers are part of the board that makes the de­ci­sion. The of­fi­cers can­not make con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly le­gal de­ci­sions un­less they are part of the board.”

Down­er said at Sun­day’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM), on­ly two oth­er board mem­bers apart from the four elect­ed of­fi­cers were of­fered and in­duct­ed, which means there are on­ly six board mem­bers for this new term of of­fice. As a re­sult of this, he said a board meet­ing can­not be con­vened un­til the board gets a quo­rum of at least nine mem­bers. Un­til the oth­er mem­ber zones and as­so­ci­a­tions ap­point their rep­re­sen­ta­tives un­der ar­ti­cle 34 (9), Sec­tion (2) of the con­sti­tu­tion and sub­mit their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Down­er said the board can­not con­vene.

So far, the new TTFA board com­pris­es new­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent Wal­lace, vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, to­geth­er with the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Richard Quan Chan and Joseph Tay­lor of the T&T Foot­ball Ref­er­ees As­so­ci­a­tion.

Board mem­bers from the Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, East­ern Coun­ties Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion, TT Pro League, T&T Su­per League, Vet­er­an Foot­ballers Foun­da­tion of T&T (VF­FOTT) and the Women’s League of Foot­ball are yet to be pro­posed and in­duct­ed, Guardian Me­dia was told.

It has been re­port­ed that the TTFA has called a board meet­ing for next Tues­day but Down­er said such a meet­ing can on­ly hap­pen if there is a quo­rum of new­ly-ap­point­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, since the life of the last board, which was ap­point­ed in 2015, ex­pired dur­ing the AGM on Sun­day (No­vem­ber 24).

Down­er ex­plained, “The board has a life of four years. At Sun­day’s meet­ing, the meet­ing was to elect the pres­i­dent and three vice pres­i­dents and the mem­bers were sup­posed to sub­mit their board mem­ber can­di­dates to be in­duct­ed at that meet­ing and that did not hap­pen, al­though the mem­ber­ship was giv­en 40 days no­tice to do so. So now, each mem­ber has to con­vene a gen­er­al meet­ing to elect their board can­di­dates and sub­mit the names to the TTFA so that the board can be con­vened.”

Mean­while, a re­lease from the TTFA yes­ter­day said Wal­lace and his team of vice pres­i­dents, Tay­lor, Joseph-War­rick and Phillip met with se­nior men’s man­ag­er Richard Piper, head coach Den­nis Lawrence and head of the TTFA Elite Pro­gramme Gary St Rose at the FA’s head of­fice in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Piper was asked to sub­mit a 2019 man­ag­er’s re­port while Lawrence was asked to sub­mit a tech­ni­cal re­port, with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the 2019 Gold Cup and Na­tions League tour­na­ments. St Rose was di­rect­ed to sub­mit sev­er­al doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a 2019 re­port on the Elite Pro­gramme and a bud­get for 2020.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian