LAHORE: Acting upon the orders of the Supreme Court, the General Council of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) has decided to hold elections on 39 different seats of the association, except of its president, on Nov 25.
The decision was taken at an emergent meeting of the POA held under the presidentship of retired Lt Gen Arif Hasan at a hotel here on Saturday.
The apex court in its decision had acknowledged Arif Hasan as genuine president of the POA as he had been elected on that seat in the elections held on Feb 4, 2012.
While the court had ordered to hold fresh elections of the remaining 39 office-bearers as they had been elected unopposed in the February 2012 elections.
The POA general council has also decided to seek permission from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) to conduct the elections on the 39 seats.
Both the international bodies have recognised the results of the Feb 4 elections, but as the House has decided to honour the orders of the Supreme Court, it has also decided to take both the international bodies into confidence.
Later, addressing the press conference, POA president Lt Gen Arif Hasan said the elections on the 39 seats will be held for the remaining period of the term, which is almost 15 months. He said the House had approved the rules for the elections.
He added that the fight between two warring groups of the POA for almost two years had served nothing.
“Despite the prevailing circumstances, Pakistan’s performance in the last Asian Games remained satisfactory, especially in baseball and volleyball. However, our performance in squash where we were expecting medals remained unimpressive,” he said.
“Due to the issues over the status of POA, late decisions were taken by the Pakistan Sports Board in supporting the Pakistan contingent. Camps were not held properly and despite all that mess, our athletes tried their best,” Arif said.
Flanked by Arif, Pakistan Federation
Baseball president Shaukat Javed lamented over the attitude of the government and said the performance could have been better had the government provided the contingent full assistance well on time.
“Our baseball team defeated Mongolia and they fought well against China before losing it. All these performances were significant, because we have no baseball stadium in Pakistan, whereas China, Japan and South Korea, our main rivals in Asia, have hundreds of stadia for this game.
“Pakistan has even attained fifth baseball ranking in Asia though the government is not much supportive of us,” Shaukat added.
Meanwhile, Dawn has learnt that Khalid Mahmood will contest again for the post of POA secretary. He had been elected for that post on Feb 4, 2012, but the legal case against the elections did not allow him to work with this title. He is these days working as POA director general.
There are reports that Arif Hasan would continue with Khalid Mahmood as secretary general. To support Arif, Khalid had lost the secretaryship of Athletics Federation of Pakistan, which president Akram Sahi had contested the POA elections against the former.
Dawn has also learnt that office-bearers of those federations which had violated the IOC Charter, such as athletics, cycling and judo, will not be included on the electoral list.
Published in Dawn, October 12th , 2014
