Fifa in desperate need of shock treatment
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Ref: "Fifa needs a knight in shining armour", Letters, yesterday.
John Shepherd has underestimated Sepp Blatter’s intelligence. Blatter has been brilliant in strategically defending his turf for more than 17 years and his leadership can go on for life. Why?
Because, in electing Fifa’s president, one man one vote is what counts. Fifa has 209 member countries, of which 54 are in Europe, three in North America and 155 in the rest of the world.
Countries like Samoa, Tahiti, Bhutan, Guam, Togo, Chad, Seychelles and others of the like together outrank Europe and North America. Those small countries have been well looked after from Fifa’s revenue of US$5.7
billion (Bt192 billion) in
the guise of football promotion.
Blatter’s populist policy has also been tested in Thailand by the past family governments as effective.
Blatter’s financial legacy was exemplified on Fifa’s
website. The Cook Islands with a population of 11,000 received a Fifa payment of $999,000. Under Fifa’s current charter and his generous distributions, he will always be elected just like the leaders of the previous Thai governments.
Shepherd’s shining knight is already in action in the name of Loretta Lynch, US attorney general.
Though five feet tall, her calm and determined appearance and past record should have met Shepherd’s wish of another spark at Fifa. Her
speciality was to catch the biggest – and hardest to
catch – criminals like drug lords, mobsters, terrorists and international sex-trafficking rings.
Fifa really needs a shock treatment just like the coup of May 22 in Thailand.
A boycott of the World Cup by European and leading South American countries would bring them to the ground and return respectability to Fifa.
Songdej Praditsmanont
Bangkok
