The much-awaited Zifa elections set for January 25 face the grave danger of being postponed.
This is after Gift Banda and Benjani Mwaruwari, who were deemed to have failed the integrity test took their cases to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for redress.
Mwaruwari wants to contest for the post of Zifa president while Banda hopes to be one of the two vice-presidents.
Temba Mliswa circulated a draft of his High Court application challenging the legality of the elections after he too was barred.
The Zifa Normalisation Committee has not been clear with the public over why it barred some candidates.
The committee refused to convene a Press conference to face the media which have a lot of questions about the people that were sidelined.
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The main problem has been with the Zifa constitution itself which states that one ought to have passed at least five Ordinary Level subjects or equivalent to be able to contest for the post of Zifa president or vice.
It is the “equivalent” part that has been problematic as it does not stipulate what is equal to 5 O’ Levels.
We are where we are now because certain things have not been clarified and that there is a veil of secrecy over the way vetting was done.
To start with, candidates had to find out through the media that they had been excluded after the Normalisation Committee failed to write to them before announcing, only to do so following backlash.
We raise concern over the way the electoral process is being conducted. We urge the electoral committee, which is composed of Zifa Normalisation Committee members, Lincoln Mutasa, Nyasha Sanyamandwe and Rosemary Mugadza, to adopt a more open approach in conducting the elections.
After the problems we had as a country which led to a two-year ban by Fifa, we can ill-afford bad episodes and should aim for a fresh start on a clean page.
If this election is going to be stopped by the courts as Mliswa seeks, we find ourselves in deeper problems particularly considering that Fifa is averse to taking football issues to public courts.
Some of the decisions made in the vetting process raise eyebrows, for instance Farai Jere's case where he was barred for not having O Levels after he had not submitted information on the name change he undertook.
The issue of name change could have been cleared over a phone call or text message.
The authorities now stand accused of trying to influence the outcome of the elections against Fifa's advice.
The reason why Fifa scrapped registration fees for candidates was to make sure all contestants were accorded a fair shot.
We hope there is still time for the Zifa Normalisation Committee to address the problems and obviate the need for appeals so that the elections can be held and football can be given a chance develop. Football must be the winner.