Of pyrrhic victories and the rule of law

CLYDE WEATHERHEAD

I HAVE noted the response of the Prime Minister to the High Court ruling in the TTFA v FIFA matter in which the PM said, among other things:

"So now United TTFA has ‘won’ and FIFA has lost. The matter is settled in local court. We are now free of the ‘colonial’ FIFA. We, boys and girls, men and women, are free to play by ourselves and against ourselves because nobody will be allowed to play with or against us.

“Oh. That’s it! I finally understand it. That means we can never lose and will always win because we will only be playing by ourselves."

I, however, find it difficult to share in the enthusiasm of others who gleefully welcome the obvious sarcasm of the PM's comments.

Let me state two points before I am accused of bias or worse.

Firstly, I would have thought that the FIFA appeal against the jurisdictional ruling of the court which is imminent would have been sufficient for this ruling to be postponed pending the Appeal Court’s ruling.

Secondly, I hold no brief for William Wallace or the TTFA executive and my criticism of their handling of this issue (as others have said) is that they failed, as leaders, to fully involve their members in what is the most significant action they were embarking on.

However, I think it is important to note that the TTFA (unlike many other football associations elsewhere) is a statutory organisation created by an act of Parliament.

In the judgment the court noted:

“FIFA has now taken to making repeated demands accompanied by threats to TTFA, most recently through its normalisation committee, to amend its rules to ‘bring them in line with FIFA statutes.’ There is no lacuna. The futility of these threats and demands should by now have become obvious. TTFA simply cannot deliver.

“The only amendment that can produce the result that FIFA commands is an amendment to the TTFA Act, and if it insists on blocking access to our courts in favour of the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport), then it should be put on notice there might be constitutional hurdles.”

This aspect of the ruling should be of concern to any lawmaker in Parliament. What it points to is that FIFA is, in effect, seeking to direct Parliament on what to do with an act which it passed to give life to the TTFA.

I am sure the PM must be concerned about this.

As a statutory body the TTFA decided, when its approach to CAS was treated by that court with bias toward FIFA – for example allowing FIFA to refuse to pay its share of the cost of arbitration – to approach the court of the land.

That is its right, like that of any citizen, to seek redress in the courts of this country.

The judgment points out:

“The wisdom of the challenge by the [TTFA officials] of the actions of FIFA is not for the court [to decide]…But it has to be said that the law expects the TTFA to do what its statutory duty requires even in the face of unlawful pressure…In the circumstances, the TTFA’s actions of seeking redress before the court was perhaps the only appropriate response which avoided capitulating to the demands of FIFA; and thereby elevating the status of FIFA statutes above the laws passed by our Parliament.”

Again, any lawmaker who has sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law and who holds the rule of law as a pivotal constitutional principle of our governance must be concerned that any person (citizen or corporate) should be facing pressure from anyone, worse the defendant in a claim before our courts, to abandon their claim including threats, as FIFA has not only made but put into action.

The fact that our Parliament, at the instance of the Government, may eventually have to decide what to do with the TTFA Act, should emphasise the seriousness of this situation as a matter of the rule of law.

This is not merely a matter of whether “we will only play by ourselves.” This is a matter of whether the rule of law in our country will be respected by an international sporting body.

This is a profoundly serious matter for the principles of our nation’s governance, its sovereignty and whether a non-governmental body’s rules can be regarded as superior to the law of our land.

It is that serious.

To successfully defend our governance against external pressure, as our country has done on several occasions in the past, can never be a pyrrhic victory.