Interim committee runs AN

AN Interim Committee consisting of Donovan Zealand, Abner Xoagub and Agnes Samaria has been appointed to run the affairs of Athletics Namibia until a new president is elected.

The chief administrator of the Namibia Sport Commission (NSC), Rusten Mogane, said that the interim committee was appointed following a request by the regions, after the previous executive committee was dissolved.
Athletics Namibia’s presidential elections on November 28 last year ended in a stalemate when the incumbent, Alpha Kangueehi, and Frank Fredericks both garnered four votes.
‘Since the old committee was dissolved, the regions asked the Namibia Sport Commission to facilitate the process to elect an interim committee to run the affairs of Athletics Namibia. I facilitated this meeting which took place in Otjiwarongo on December 20, and which was attended by six of the eight regions,’ Mogane said.
‘We decided that the members of the interim committee will not be eligible to stand for the elections,’ he added.
Zealand is an experienced sport administrator, having served as the secretary general of Athletics Namibia, the vice president of TISAN (Tertiary Institutes’ Sport Association of Namibia), and as a commissioner of the NSC.
Xoagub is also a former commissioner of the NSC and served as secretary general of the Namibia National Olympic Committee till last year, while Samaria is currently a Chief Sport Officer at the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, after retiring from the international athletics circuit last year.
The interim committee’s responsibilities will be to organise a congress to hold new presidential elections, while they will also have to organise AN’s activities in the interim.
Following the election on November 28, AN declared that new elections would be held on February 28, but Zealand said that this was not necessarily the case.
‘We can’t say that the new elections will take place on February 28. No one has seen the minutes of the congress and I don’t want to speculate on the decision taken there. For us the minutes are crucial and we still have to decide whether it will be a continuation of last year’s congress or if we would have to organise fresh elections,’ he said.
‘Our mandate is very clear. We are not biased and our job is to facilitate a fair elective process and to help and serve the athletes,’ he said.
Some of the issues that the interim committee would have to consider include whether to send a Namibian team to the 2009 World Cross Country Championships in March and the World Youth Athletics Championships in June.
Zealand said it was important to send teams to these events to help prepare them for major international events coming up in 2010.
‘Our juniors performed very well at last year’s Zone 6 Youth Games and it’s important that they continue their preparations for big international events coming up next year. This will be the ideal opportunity to expose our athletes to international competition,’ he said.
Mogane said that the Ministry of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture and the International Associations of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had been informed of the appointment of the interim committee.
He said that Kangueehi and his former executive had to hand over all documentation, including financial statements, to the NSC, but that they were still waiting for the relevant documents.
– namibiasport.com.na