Chris Theko
Federation of Athletics Lesotho has been ordered by the Southern African Athletics (SAA) to go for fresh Executive Committee Elections
This comes after the intervention if the World Athletics in the national federation’s squabble on the legitimacy of the newly-elected executive committee.
FAL Spokesperson, Sejanamane Maphathe, confirmed that the World Athletics had ordered the SAA leadership to solve the challenges within the FAL.
Maphathe said on Tuesday this week the Secretary General of Athletics in the Southern African Region Aleck Skosana conducted a virtual meeting with all FAL executive committee members to address the ongoing leadership challenges.
“We all had a virtual meeting him as one of the direct orders from World Athletics,” Maphathe said.
He said that in that meeting, a decision was reached to have fresh constitutional elections.
“Skosana told us as FAL that since the executive committee mandate expired on 31 October 2020, there should be elections held for a fresh mandate,” he said.
The elections are to be conducted before 31 March 2021.
The outgoing FAL Secretary General Makara Thibinyane and Vice President TÅ¡eliso Pheta had been summoned to a disciplinary hearing by the athletics body in a meeting that was to take place on 5 February 2021 at the Lesotho Sports and Recreation (LSRC) offices in Maseru.
However, Newsday has learned that the said disciplinary hearing will no longer take place.
The duo had been summoned to a hearing on charges of misconduct.
Thibinyane and Pheta were in the forefront of the association’s members who organised and convened elections in contravention of the association’s constitution in October last year.
The elections were then followed by a court case where the accused had taken some of the outgoing committee members namely; Makhaola Serake, Kokolia Mokonyana and Sejanamane Maphathe to the High Court claiming that the trio refused to release the federation’s funds.
They had also accused the trio for continuing to call and host meetings in the name of the federation despite being “oustedâ€.
While the respondents were getting ready for their appearance in court, the sport’s international mother body, had written to the federation and advised them to settle their issues out of court.
The October elections and subsequently the High Court case, were then withdrawn as per the advice.
In separate letters signed by the FAL outgoing president Makhaola Serake, Thibinyane and Pheta’s misconduct charges were based on their non-compliance with the arbitration tribunal’s decision as per articles 9.2 (c) and 9.5. (a) iii of the FAL constitution.
The letters also stated that the duo is accused of failing to exhaust all the federation’s internal remedies before taking the disputes to the High Court without authorization of the National Executive Committee (NEC) as stated in article 5.1 (e) of the constitution.