(ATR) As expected, Sepp Blatter has confirmed he will stand for a fifth term as FIFA president.
The Swiss made the announcement in a video interview shown at the Soccerex Global Convention in Manchester on Monday.
"My mission is not finished," he said in the video recorded in Zurich last week. "And I have told the FIFA Congress, I have told the congresses of the confederations. Then I got through the last congress in Sao Paulo not only the impression but the support of the majority, a huge majority of national associations asking ‘Please go on, be our president also in future."
Blatter said he would confirm his intentions to the FIFA ExCo at its Sept. 25-26 meeting.
The FIFA chief, who was first elected in 1998, had been expected to officially confirm his candidacy at the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo in June.
Despite winning overwhelming support from five of the six regional confederations, UEFA the exception, Blatter chose to wait until after Michel Platini had decided not to stand against him before announcing he would run again for the top job in world football.
The Frenchman confirmed at the end of August he would not challenge the incumbent, who will be 79 when the FIFA presidential election is held next May. Instead, Platini told UEFA's 54 member associations at ameeting in Monaco that hewanted another term as UEFA president. The elections are in March 2015. The 59-year-old had considered running for the FIFA presidency after withdrawing support for Blatter on the eve of the World Cup in Brazil, claiming he reneged on apromise to step down in 2015.
After a wave of corruption scandals linked to the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding race and 2011 FIFA presidential election, Blatter's bid to be re-elected for a fifth term on May 29 is now a mere formality. Former FIFA deputy general Jerome Champagne, who declared his candidacy in January, is a rank outsider in his bid to oust Blatter, a former ally.
Integrity Check for Blatter
On Friday, FIFA confirmed some new rules for the presidential election "designed to ensure transparencyand fairness… as well as respect for basic and fundamental democratic principles".
An Ad-hoc Electoral Committee was recently set up to oversee the election process for the FIFA president. If no UEFA, Asian or CONCACAF candidate stands against Blatter, as seems increasingly likely, this committee is likely to have little to do.
Chairman Domenico Scala, who also chairs the FIFA Audit & Compliance Committee, confirmed on FIFA.com how the presidential election will work. He said part of the committee’s work was to instruct the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, chaired by Michael Garcia, to conduct integrity checks of all candidates.
What these checks on Blatter will involve is not clear – yet.
Scala said FIFA Statutes set the deadline for candidates to be proposed by member associations at four months before the start of the Congress, which is Jan. 29. "To be eligible, a candidate has to have played an active role in association football for two of the five years preceding his proposed candidature and present declarations of support from at least five member associations," he said.
Asked about any restrictions on what candidates can do during campaigning, he said they were bound by the FIFA Code of Ethics "and may be subject to investigations in cases of irregularities".
"Candidates must avoid conflicts of interest, in particular in the context of campaign funding," Scala said. "Furthermore, campaign activities by candidates holding official positions must not be mixed with activities carried out under the current office of the candidates concerned."
That means Blatter will have to be careful he doesn’t overstep the mark when he meets confederation and football association leaders, the electorate, in the build-up to the election.
Reported by Mark Bisson.
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