There seem to be more unan­swered ques­tions from FI­FA's rul­ing on Sep­tem­ber 24, a sit­u­a­tion that could po­ten­tial­ly call on the sport's world gov­ern­ing body for clar­i­ty.

FI­FA's sus­pen­sion of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) came with a con­di­tion that it must first drop the court mat­ter, and align its Statutes with that of the FI­FA to re­gain FI­FA mem­ber­ship. How­ev­er, Matthew Gayle, one of the four TTFA lawyers be­lieves that FI­FA has been il­log­i­cal­ly in­con­sis­tent with its re­quest and need­ed to be clear with what it wants since the TTFA was formed by an act of Par­lia­ment and it could be frankly au­da­cious for them (FI­FA) to ask the T&T Par­lia­ment to amend it.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports on Sun­day he said, "It makes no sense," Gayle ex­plained, just two days be­fore Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in rules on the le­git­i­ma­cy of the FI­FA to ap­point a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to re­place a du­ly elect­ed foot­ball ad­min­is­tra­tion on March 17, to man­age foot­ball in T&T.

Gayle as­sured the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion is per­fect­ly in line with that of FI­FA since FI­FA ap­proved it. "The on­ly thing that is in­con­sis­tent with FI­FA Statutes is the Act of Par­lia­ment and I don't think that FI­FA will be so au­da­cious to ask the Par­lia­ment to amend its act."

The aims and ob­jects of the As­so­ci­a­tion are: (a) to reg­u­late and con­trol the con­duct of Foot­ball in T&T (un­der the Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tionale de Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion sys­tem) and to pro­vide play­ing fields and con­ve­niences in con­nec­tion there­with;

Ac­cord­ing­ly, Ar­ti­cle 2 (e) ob­jec­tives of the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion states: (e) to re­spect and pre­vent any in­fringe­ment of the statutes, reg­u­la­tions, di­rec­tives, and de­ci­sions of FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF, CFU, and TTFA as well as the Laws of the Game, and to en­sure that these are al­so re­spect­ed by its Mem­bers; Act item 4 states: The af­fairs of the As­so­ci­a­tion shall be man­aged by a Gen­er­al Coun­cil whose elec­tion pow­ers and pro­ce­dures shall be as pre­scribed in the Con­sti­tu­tion and Rules of the As­so­ci­a­tion.

Ar­ti­cle 7 Con­duct of Bod­ies and Of­fi­cials of the TTFA Con­sti­tu­tion states: The bod­ies and Of­fi­cials of TTFA must ob­serve the statutes, reg­u­la­tions, di­rec­tives, de­ci­sions, and the Code of Ethics of FI­FA, CON­CA­CAF, CFU and TTFA in their ac­tiv­i­ties.

Last week Jus­tice Gob­in re­served her rul­ing in the court the for Tues­day and could well call up­on FI­FA's lo­cal lawyers for clar­i­fi­ca­tion of what is meant by ask­ing the TTFA to bring its Statutes in line with theirs (FI­FA).

Gayle said he was al­so con­fused by FI­FA's claim that while the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee will cease to ex­ist dur­ing the sus­pen­sion, FI­FA will on­ly com­mu­ni­cate with the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee con­cern­ing all T&T-foot­ball-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

William Wal­lace, the TTFA pres­i­dent has said his group will drop the court bat­tle with the FI­FA if the court rules against them.

How­ev­er, he main­tained that if the court rules in their favour, they will con­vene an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing to de­cide on the way for­ward for every­thing, in­clu­sive of their if they will con­tin­ue or drop the mat­ters in the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sports (CAS) in Switzer­land as well as the ap­peal mat­ter in the lo­cal court which comes up for hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 21.

ABOUT THE TTFA VS FI­FA CASE (SIDE BAR)

Through the law­suit, Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips, and Su­san Joseph-War­rick (re­signed on Sep­tem­ber 25) are seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion to re­move them in March and re­place them with a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing of busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, at­tor­ney Judy Daniel, and re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano was null, void, and of no le­gal or bind­ing ef­fect.

They are al­so seek­ing a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion bar­ring FI­FA from med­dling in the TTFA's af­fairs by al­leged­ly seek­ing to cir­cum­vent the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by re­mov­ing du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Gob­in has al­so been asked to de­cide whether FI­FA's statutes, un­der which the re­place­ment was done, con­form with the lo­cal leg­is­la­tion, which es­tab­lished the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Wal­lace and his team ini­tial­ly brought pro­ceed­ings against FI­FA in the Court for Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) but were forced to with­draw as they could not pay the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs.

Their po­si­tion was part­ly due to FI­FA's pol­i­cy to not pay its share of the fees and CAS's rules, which re­quire the oth­er par­ty to pay the full costs when the oth­er fails in its oblig­a­tions.

Af­ter the case was filed, FI­FA ap­plied for it to be struck out as it claimed that the TTFA by virtue of its mem­ber­ship with FI­FA agreed to for­go all le­gal ac­tion in lo­cal courts in favour of pro­ceed­ings be­fore the CAS fol­low­ing a vote on Sep­tem­ber 22 in which 21 mem­bers vot­ed for the TTFA to drop the mat­ter, 8 votes to fight FI­FA and 3 mem­bers ab­stained.

How­ev­er, the TTFA failed to meet FI­FA's dead­line of 3:00 pm (T&T Time) on Wednes­day 23 Sep­tem­ber af­ter fil­ing their with­draw­al ap­pli­ca­tion at 3:23 pm and on Sep­tem­ber 24 (T&T Re­pub­lic Day) FI­FA sus­pend­ed the TTFA form all FI­FA's ac­tiv­i­ties, pro­grammes and events un­til fur­ther no­tice.