Issa Hayatou to be re-elected CAF head again

Johannesburg: Cameroonian Issa Hayatou will be re-elected unopposed in Morocco Sunday for a final four-year term as the Confederation of African Football (CAF) president.

The 66-year-old, voted into power during the 1988 Cup of Nations, said last month that this would be his last period as boss of the 54-state organisation. Cote d`Ivoirian Jacques Anouma, one of the four Africans on the executive committee of world governing body FIFA, wanted to oppose Hayatou at the CAF congress in Marrakech but a change to the election rules disqualified him. Anouma and the Cote d`Ivorian and Liberian football associations made four appeals to the Switzerland-based Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) in an effort to overturn the ruling but it backed CAF each time. The 60-year-old Ivorian believes Hayatou was behind a successful Algerian proposal at a special congress in Seychelles last year to amend the rules and restrict the CAF presidency to voting members of the executive committee. Although permitted to attend CAF executive meetings, Anouma cannot vote because he is not an elected member and the 44-6 verdict in favour of the change suggests he would have suffered a heavy election defeat by Hayatou. The Cameroonian has been challenged twice during his lengthy reign and both opponents, Armando Machedo of Angola and Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana, suffered humiliating losses. IANS