Port of Spain, June 4 (IANS) Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) chief Raymond Tim Kee has said they backed losing challenger Prince Ali bin Hussein in last Friday’s FIFA presidential elections, but not because they had any qualms about incumbent Sepp Blatter’s leadership.
Kee said the local FA simply believed it was time for Blatter to step down, since he had previously given notice not to stand re-election, reports CMC.
“I think I speak safely now and say that Trinidad and Tobago without having any fault with Mr Blatter’s management and leadership, contrary to what many people think, I simply thought that the time had come for him to demit office,” Kee said on Wednesday.
“Because he, unprovoked and of his own volition, had mentioned at the last congress we had that last term would have been his last so when he came and he threw his hat in the ring in the recent past it was a surprise for many people.”
In a dramatic turn of events, Blatter on Tuesday announced he would step down. At a hastily-arranged news conference in Zurich, the 79-year-old said though he had gained a new mandate from the organisation’s members, it was clear he did not have the support from “everyone in the world”.
Blatter’s resignation came on the heels of media reports that he was now under investigation by the America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States (US) Justice Department.
He was not named in a 47-count indictment announced last week by the US and which identified several of his FIFA colleagues, including vice-president and Caribbean football boss, Jeffrey Webb.
Kee said Blatter had done the “honourable thing” as he would have spent the rest of his presidency defending scandal.
“I am not entirely surprised. When I saw that his secretary general’s name (Jerome Valcke) was mentioned as a facilitator so to speak for some movement of funds, that put him in a serious negative position and he did what I thought was the honurable thing to do,” Kee noted.
“In the absence of that he would have had to spend the next four years defending and defending and defending so that I am not really surprised.”