IT is really scandalous and surprising how Football House can add an amendment to the constitution but fail to remove names of former office bearers as signatories to the altered document.
I wonder what the rationale was behind inserting a clause silently without telling the members during the reconvened annual general meeting held in Lusaka, where the Zambian Premier League was restructured.
It would have been prudent to enlighten the members that the clause on Club Licensing was officially included into the document then apologise that it does not have the names of current FAZ president Kalusha Bwalya and general secretary George Kasengele as signatories.
The constitution should be a respected document that should only be altered by following the laid down procedure as enshrined otherwise as one Andrew Kamanga said, what would be the relevance of having a constitution if it can easily be doctored, manipulated at any given situation.
I took time to check past documentation concerning Club Licensing and its ‘enactment’ into the FAZ constitution. According to minutes for the 2011 annual general meeting (found in the 2014AGM documents), the proposal to include an Article on Club Licensing was put to a vote and it was adopted by acclamation.
However, that was/is contrary to the constitution which, under Article 53 (Power to make, alter and/or amend rules and regulations) states that (1) the executive committee may make or amend the rules and regulation subject to confirmation by the Council.
(2) An ordinary quorum, in Article 26. 2 (iv), shall be sufficient for a decision on amendments to the rules and regulation. (3) Proposals for the amendments to the rules and regulations shall be adopted by a simple majority. (4) Voting on rules and regulations shall be secret ballot.
But funny enough, Club Licensing was put to a vote and it was adopted by acclamation and one wonders how this can be explained.
The comrades who were tasked to work on the adding Article 45 A must have been in a serious hurry as they forgot to first remove the underlines that engulfed the new article and also overlooked the aspect of taking ownership of the document unlike leaving names of former office bearers still intact on an amended constitution.
I feel it would be important for the current leadership to take ownership of their document by appending the signatures of the current president and general secretary unlike dragging names of people who left the association a long time ago.
Surely, someone clever enough should have asked the bosses as to how an amended document can still have names of people who are not around, unless Football House is telling us the error occurred as the process was done in a hurry.
On top of that, I feel Club Licensing is an administrative matter that has been placed in a wrong area of discipline. It should have at-least sat somewhere near Article 23 which deals with club, registration and the kind.
So really it is saddening that while the procedure might have been done ‘correctly’, names of names of the former office bearers still appear in the constitution along with articles being wrongly placed.
This should also act as wake to former committee members to counter checks the many other documents they signed on before they get tempered and land them in problems.
It is high time these so called administrators that attend these AGM’s woke up before they find the constitution having a new clause/s barring holding of elections to make position personal to holder.
These councillors should stop the trend of wanting only one person to speak on behalf of the masses but they should be seen to be making bold stance during these meetings unlike always wanting to pose for photographs with Kalusha after the meeting.
Otherwise what would be the need of crying foul if they could not even see that an amendment was made to their treasured ‘bible’ and it was carrying wrong names of office bearers.
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