JFF 2.0

President of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), Michael Ricketts, is expressing relief that the voting members of the body have been significantly increased to 56, after it was ratified by the executives during the annual general meeting (AGM) at Belair High School in Mandeville, Manchester, yesterday.

The voting members will now move from 13, which has been in place since 2007, after former president Captain Horace Burrell retook office. It ensured that only the 13 parish presidents were able to vote on changes related to the island’s football, including who is elected president. Kingston and St Andrew are counted as one vote.

“To be honest, 13 votes would never be a true reflection of the interest that ought to have a say in selecting the person who runs football. I think it is a very significant landmark as a number of persons, over the years, would have disagreed with the process of having 13 persons making that decision.

NEXT ELECTION

“We are very happy and the outcome of the exercise would vindicate what the JFF has in mind. Going forward, 56 persons will, as of the next election, determine who leads the JFF,” Ricketts said.

Burrell, who first won the JFF presidency in 1994, had enacted the change, reducing the voting members from more than 100 to 13, after he defeated Creston Boxhill in 2007. Boxhill, in the previous election, uprooted Burrell from the presidency at the 2003 congress.

According to Ricketts, the new structure of the JFF will afford parish associations two votes, with tier-one clubs in both men’s and women’s football also having two votes, as well as interest groups such as the Professional Football Jamaica Limited (PFJL), Jamaica Football Referees Association (JFRA), Intercollegiate Sports Association (Intercol) and the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA).

Another change that was effected yesterday was the directorship of the association. Ricketts explained that the JFF will now have 11 directors, which has been reduced from 19. The four confederations chairpersons, the president of the JFF, the four vice presidents and two co-opted members will now make up the Board of Directors. Before, even with the larger set of directors, the co-opted members were not able to vote.

“That is to facilitate a process that was recommended to us by FIFA and when we told them that we had 19 directors, we were virtually laughed at because a number of far larger countries have fewer directors than us,” Ricketts said.