The general assembly of the Asian Athletics Association renewed its full confidence in Lieutenant General Dahlan Jumaan Al Hamad as president of the Asian athletics federation until 2019, having already won unopposed months earlier. The 21st general assembly, held in Wuhan, elected its officials with representatives of 45 countries from the continent taking part in the democratic process, in the presence of IAAF president Lamine Diack of Senegal and his deputies, Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Sergey Bubka.
The general assembly also elected the vice-presidents and members of the federation’s executive board, choosing five winners from ten candidates for the vice-presidential seats: Saudi Arabia’s Sohail Al Zawawi (34 votes), India’s Lalit Bhanot (32 votes), Kazakhstan’s Alexei Kondrat (32 votes), Iraq’s Dr Talib Al Saffar (24 votes) and the Philippines’ Philip Juico (24 votes), while Thailand’s Sawang Ramingwong (23 votes), Indonesia’s Taigor Tanjin (16 votes), Japan’s Mitsugi Ogita (14 votes), Iran’s Eidi Alijani (8 votes) and South Korea’s Hao Dong-jin (13 votes) all missed out.
The results carried plenty of surprises, most notably the stunning absence of Korean and Japanese candidates from the executive board list. The ballot produced victories for a different electoral bloc, far from expectations and predictions, as candidates from leading federations – Japan, South Korea, Iran and Hong Kong – failed to win seats on the new 2015-2019 board. The eight winners from 13 candidates who contested the election were: Pakistan’s Muhammad Akram (34 votes), Jordan’s Saad Huwaisat (32 votes), Malaysia’s Karim Ibrahim (32 votes), Kuwait’s Mohammed Jumaa (31 votes), Sri Lanka’s Patha Fernando (30 votes), Chinese Taipei’s Chang Chung-Wang (29 votes) and the UAE’s Nasser Al Maamari (29 votes), while Bahrain’s Ruqaya Al Ghasra won the women’s seat unopposed alongside Laos’s Malia Sonouham.
With this result, the curtain closed on the contest for the Asian Athletics Association’s executive board, whose new term runs until 2019 – a presidency Major General Dahlan Al Hamad had already secured back in March, allowing him to focus on his vision for developing athletics across the Asian continent after having taken over the federation’s presidency two years earlier and achieved considerable success that made him Asia’s choice once again to lead the sport for the next four years, before he faces the challenge of defending his standing as an IAAF leader in the vice-presidential election to be held on the sidelines of the World Athletics Championships in China this August.
Al Hamad’s bid to keep both of his positions comes amid the major challenges awaiting Qatari athletics, foremost among them hosting the 2019 World Athletics Championships, considered the third-largest global sporting event after the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.
Major General Dahlan Al Hamad called for unity, but…
Al Hamad, at the helm of Asian athletics, made tremendous efforts to bring the members together and unify the positions of candidates for the board and federation committees, but the rigidity of many, a lack of transparency, and the pursuit of narrow interests fanned the flames of rivalry between the electoral blocs. In the end, democracy and the ballot boxes had the final say, and the Wuhan congress closed its pages, with hope that the wheel of work would start turning from today.
Al Kuwari and Sulaiman took part in the assembly
Mohammed Jassim Al Kuwari, secretary general, and Mohammed Sulaiman, assistant secretary general, took part in the proceedings of the Asian congress representing the Qatar Athletics Federation. It is worth noting that Sulaiman will head Qatar’s national team delegation at the Asian Athletics Championships, which begin tomorrow in Wuhan and run from 3 to 6 June with the participation of 45 countries, men and women.
