ANOCA: Cameroon’s Presidential Candidate Disqualified

Cote d’Ivoire’s Lassana Yakire Palenfo, the president of the Association of National Olympic Committee of Africa (ANOCA) is set to be elected unopposed as his sole challenger, Hamad Kalkaba Malboum of Cameroon has been disqualified over unethical practices.
The elections are holding in Djibouti, East Africa. In formation reaching www.sportsvillagesquare.com has it that the executive committee of ANOCA came into possession of documents that implied that finances had been made available by the Cameroonian Government to aid the candidacy of Hamad Kalkaba Malboum and to “motivate National Olympic Committees.”
The documents were also allegedly indicating that more funds was being sought to “continue the exercise”.
Consequently, an emergency executive committee was conveyed on Saturday which excluded the president as he was an interested party. The meeting was chaired by the first vice president, Mustafa Berraf of Algeria.
Information reaching the Sports Village Square has it that Hamad Kalkaba Malboum who apart from being the President of Cameroon’s national Olympic committee, also heads the country’s sports committee admitted that the documents tendered were authentic but vehemently disputed that the funds that had been provided by the government had or were being used to illegally “motivate” any person with influence over the elections, or NOCs.
ANOCA board members concluded that “the direct involvement of the government had the effect of creating conflict between NOCs and their ministries of sport. This was due to the fact that the Cameroonian ministry of foreign affairs had instructed its embassies in Africa to directly appeal to their host governments to ask NOC to vote for the candidate.
“At the same time, the ministry had also directly written to all ministries of foreign affairs in Africa requesting them to contact their ministries of sport with the same message”.
ANOCA, which has its headquarters in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, was of the view that the actions of the Cameroonian government had the capability of creating a potential conflict between ministries and NOCs.
It ruled that the action was a clear infringement of the very tenets of the autonomy of Olympic sport. Consequently, Kalkaba Malboum was asked to withdraw from the presidential race, a move he rejected.
As a result, he was disqualified and will also face the IOC Ethics Commission for unethical behaviour and violating autonomy of sport by inviting and directly involving government interference in the campaign for presidency of an Olympic organisation.
He is also suspended from all activities and positions related to the Olympic Movement in Africa pending the outcome of the investigation by the Ethics Commission. He will not be allowed to represent the NOSC in the 17th Ordinary Session of the General Assembly. However, any other delegates may represent Cameroon.