I am still in charge of Thai FA, insists Worawi

Worawi’s third consecutive two-year mandate expired on June 16 but the association was unable to hold an election because its meeting to approve a regulations amendment in line with new Fifa statutes had to be cancelled the previous day.

The cancellation was forced by Pattaya FC securing a court injunction that prevented the association from holding a vote to seek approval of its amended rules. After consulting with Virat Chanpanich, a candidate for the FAT presidency, the fourth-tier club on Monday agreed to withdraw the suit against the FAT as demanded by world governing body Fifa, who had threatened to suspend the Thai FA’s membership. 

Despite the way now being open for the FAT to get its new rules approved, Virat insisted that as Worawi’s presidential mandate had expired, he could no longer legitimately stay and conduct the election. 

However, Worawi, also a member of Fifa’s powerful executive committee, argued he could legally stay on in the post and there was no other way to resolve the issue but to approve the amendment to the FAT regulations and then hold the election.

“Article 17 of the FAT statutes states clearly that the incumbent administrative board is able to stay in the post until the appointment of the new management. There is no power vacuum as Virat claimed,” Worawi said yesterday in an interview on Channel 3’s evening news programme.

“Fifa again stated clearly in a letter sent to us that we must approve the new FAT rules before we can hold the poll. We can do nothing to change Fifa’s decision. We can’t find another way to get round that.” 

A bone of contention remains over the number of members eligible to vote in the election and the method to select them. But Worawi insisted that the figure of 72 eligible members demanded by FAT’s revised regulations derived from Fifa’s proposals.

“We now live in a world where we cannot hide anything. Fifa know everything because they researched the number of teams playing in the country’s domestic competitions. They subsequently proposed a new structure for Thai football. I myself want teams from each province to have voting rights. But Fifa saw that those teams were still not run professionally.”  

Earlier yesterday, Thai Premier League club Chon Buri FC, a leading member of Worawi’s rival group, postponed its plan to submit a letter to the Sports Authority of Thailand requesting that it sort out the issue of the FAT election.

The move required the backing of one-third of the association’s members but Chon Buri vice president Annop Singtothong revealed he had to postpone submitting the letter because many more clubs wanted to join the move.

“We need support from 60 members before we can ask for intervention from the SAT. At the moment, we have the required numbers but we’ve been contacted by many more clubs as they want to join us, which would take the number to more than 100.

“We need to know the exact number of our supporters so we have decided to postpone submitting the letter. However, we should be able to submit it this week,” said Annop.