GFF meets UDFA on constitutional reform

By Avenash Ramzan

Officials of the Normalisation Committee of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) on Wednesday evening travelled to the Mining Town of Linden to meet with members of the Upper Demerara Football Association (UDFA) on the issue of constitutional reform.

The meeting was held at the Linden Enterprise Network building on Republic Avenue, and was attended by Chairman of the Normalisation Committee Clinton Urling, GFF’s General Secretary Richard Groden and Assistant General Secretary Diedre Davis, and GFF’s Director of Marketing and Communications Rawle Toney.

According to Toney, the meeting was geared to chart the way forward for the UDFA to have its election after it would have adopted its new constitution. The GFF’s next stops will be Essequibo and Bartica, two associations the local governing body has direct responsibility for, Toney pointed out.

UDFA ban lifted

In June this year, the Normalisation Committee concluded what had been described by Urling as a “very successful” Extraordinary Congress attended by FIFA’s Head of Member Associations, Primo Cavaro.

Hosted at the Marriott Hotel in Kingston, members of Congress were able to adopt the amended statutes of the GFF constitution.

They also reviewed and subsequently lifted the sanctions that were imposed on the UDFA executives by the previous GFF administration. Urling had said at a post-Congress press briefing that the meeting was “successful” and “very cordial.”

“It lasted just about an hour and a half, and we adopted unanimously the new statutes of the Guyana Football Federation. We also lifted the sanctions that were imposed on January 17, 2014, on the UDFA executives. They will now be able to participate in football and football related activities; they won’t resume their roles as the executives of the UDFA,” Urling had explained.

Those executives were Sharma Solomon, Collie Hercules, Terrence Mitchell, Wayne Bethune, Rawle Johnson, Jeffrey Trotman, Ansawatt Barrett, Patrick Day and Clive Brushe.

The aforementioned officials of the UDFA were suspended by the Christopher Matthias-led GFF for playing their tournament final on January 1, 2014, at the MSC ground, simultaneously with the Georgetown Football Association’s (GFA) Banks Beer Cup Finals at the Guyana National Stadium.

Congress at the time believed that the two should not have been played on the same day, but the UDFA explained that the finals being played on New Year’s Day, 2014 meant a lot to the Linden community and as such, went ahead with the hosting of their finals.

Notably, all the associations present at the GFF Extraordinary Congress with the exception of the GFA voted for the suspension to be lifted with immediate effect.

Following those elections, the GFF Congress will be held where an Executive Committee will be elected to lead the local governing body forward. It has since been announced that the GFF Congress is fixed for November 14.