Many believe that one of the issues that has held hockey back from becoming a bigger sport globally is that so many of the rules are interpretive, and left to an individual’s opinion, rather than set in stone. The same could be said of the game’s administration, which it appears suffers the same issue.
Further to our article “Voting Rights or Wrongs? published on 31stof May it has been revealed that the following countries which are Members of the International Hockey Federation were not online to vote during the Presidential and Executive Board elections: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Burundi, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Israel, Mauritius, Moldova, Nicaragua, Samoa, Sierra Leone South Africa and Tonga.
On Thursday night we received an email from the FIH Senior Communications Manager requesting that Hockey World News and Not The Footy Show “add all these elements in your next – and/or past (online) – articles on the subject.”
The ‘elements’ are listed below:
- “The full Congress (Day 1 and Day 2) was live on Watch.Hockey for everyone to watch
- Gambia, Timor-Leste and Saudi Arabia were all accepted as provisional FIH Members by the Executive Board (as the Statutes stipulate)
- As you can see in this media release, the following was mentioned: As specified in the FIH Statutes (article 2.2(a)(ii)), newly approved Members present at Congress will have the right to participate in meetings of Congress and to cast a vote on resolutions put to Congress.
- The Elections were overseen by the FIH Elections Oversight Panel (EOP), as stipulated in the FIH Elections Manual (art. 11). UK company Lumi operated the e-voting process. Furthermore, FIH appointed an independent notary (from UK firm Cheeswrights Scrivener Notaries LLP), who chaired and oversaw the election process. His powers were delegated by the Elections Oversight Panel.”
None of these points were ever in dispute in the article.
However as stated article 2.2(a)(ii) refers to rights and regulations of Members. While the FIH is interpreting this to mean that new members may vote once elected at Congress we have been advised that this may appear ambiguous but based on the articles that follow the interpretation is intended to refer to a Congress in the future, as stated in the previous piece.
If this were not the case why would you have article 2.2. (b) (ii) which states that Members “must pay when due all Member subscriptions decided upon by Congress and any other monies due and owing to the FIH. Any Member that has failed to pay any part of any subscription or other debt when due for payment to the FIH: (A) may not enter any team in an International Event without the approval of the Executive Board, unless it settles all such debts at least ninety (90) days before the start of the International Event in question; and (B) may not attend (and so may not vote at) any meeting of Congress unless the full amount owing is paid (in fully cleared funds) at least 24 hours before the start of the meeting;”
This is common sense. There are many clubs to which you have to apply to become a member, or have to be nominated to be a member. There is a process that has to be followed before you are accepted as a Member of that club or organization. Once your membership is approved and it has been ratified, you are then invited to pay the appropriate fees to become a Member, thus giving you access to the member benefits and voting rights.
This clause clearly clarifies the meaning of the initial article, which is once accepted as a Member they will be afforded voting rights, however not until they have paid their membership fees.
Is there any organization where you are given the right to vote before paying your membership fees?
Of course where this would differ is if there were no membership fees to be paid. Yet the statutes clearly state that Members have to pay fees to be a member of the FIH in order to participate in tournaments and also have a vote at Congress. So there must be a standard membership fee surely?
The Membership fee should be uniform for each country. If it transpires that this is not the case this opens a whole new can of worms, as hypothetically how can one Member country paying a greatly reduced membership fee compared to another Member nation be afforded the same voting rights and privileges?
In their email the FIH has also referred toArticle 6.2 (e) (ii) FIH Statutes:
An NA whose application to be admitted as a Member is on the agenda may send up to two (2) delegates (aged 18 years or over) to the meeting, one of whom must own a valid passport from that Member’s Country and shall be designated the head of the delegation. He may speak to but may not vote on the NA’s application for admission as a Member. If the application is granted, from that point the delegation may speak to and vote (exclusively through the head of the delegation) on all subsequent resolutions put to Congress at the meeting.
Having sought advice on the interpretation of this we have been advised that article 2.2 (b) (ii) would take precedence over this as the statutes state that to be a Member all fees must be paid “at least 24 hours before the start of the meeting.”
Where there may be some allowance is when it comes to the word “resolution.”
In law, “a resolution is a written motion adopted by a deliberative body.” Of course there are different types of legal resolution.
A procedural resolution deals with the methods and means by which substantive items are made and administered. Substantive resolutions apply to essential legal principles and rules of right, similar to substantive law. Substantive law is the set of laws that governs how members of a society are to behave. These sets of laws are most commonly codified in a set of Statutes. Hopefully this makes sense? It is sometimes hard to simplify legal jargon!
So the resolutions refer to the terms of the statutes or rules and regulations of the body to which you are a member.
A resolution is the final form of a decision taken at a meeting by voting on a motion, with or without amendment. A Resolution must not be confused with a motion. A motion is considered at a meeting, a resolution is the outcome of the discussion. A resolution is put in place to make it a law or a regulation of that organization.
A resolution is not an election. This is very important in this instant. So apart from the 24 hour payment issue should the new members have been allowed to vote in an election or only on resolutions that were raised?
As requested we have shared the comments from the FIH, but still feel that there are many questions over the election. Maybe we are alone in that view, maybe we are not?
Martin,
Thanks again for your lengthy comment. Which I think highlights that there are problems with the structures and the processes and have been for a long time.
Which is probably the reason for my post. The statutes and regulations are being ignored or being interpreted to suit, and that is not good for the sport or ultimately those who play it. If no one highlights these issues then they will continue. The chances are they will continue anyway as it appears that the National Associations are too scared to speak up.
The reason every organisation has structure is to give it strong foundations on which to build. The reason all sports/games have rules is to ensure that there is structure and that it does not degenerate into bedlam.
Maybe the two of us are explaining in our own individual ways why the sport is where it is today?
You have pointed to what you see as irregularities in the voting for the election of the President of the FIH, but I am not sure what you hope to achieve by doing so. A clarification of the Regulations so that such a thing cannot occur again? A rerun of the election? Or of course both of those things, neither of which may be possible i.e. will be fought ‘tooth and nail’ with delay, obscurantism and ambiguity.
In my previous comment I pointed out an number of instances where “the FIH” (what or who is “the FIH”)
have made statements in regard to the Rules of Hockey (the Rules to which the game is played) which they have subsequently completely disregarded.
Foe example. Under the heading Rule Changes in 2011 it was declared that “the Forcing Rule is deleted because an action of this sort can be dealt with under other Rules”. As the Forcing Rule prohibited the forcing of ball-body contact, self defense and the ‘manufacture’ of an obstruction offence actions such as these should have continued to be “dealt with” as offenses after 2011. How are offenses dealt with? They are penalized if they disadvantage opponents or if not, play may be allowed to continue under the Advantage Rule; there are no other options.
What happened after 2011 was that all mention of forcing was removed from the rule-book and umpires immediately after January 2011 ceased to regard forcing as an offence and so did not penalize even the most blatant instances of it. No reading of ” because an action of this sort can be dealt with under other Rules” can reasonably be taken to mean that any action of this sort will henceforth be ignored.
This is but one example, but an important one because the game is being ruined by what is in fact blatant cheating, the combination of deliberate obstruction offenses (which are also generally ignored) with forcing offenses, more often than not to ‘win’ penalty corners.
Getting umpires to ignore obstruction offenses has been achieved by the deletion of key advice to umpires concerning what kind of action is likely to result in obstruction (all Rule interpretation and Advice to Umpires contained in the rule-book prior to 2004 was deleted in 2004 when the rule-book was reformatted using a metric paper size and the entire rule-book rewritten), and by focusing on the actions of would be tacklers i.e. by requiring a tackle attempt, rather than by considering the illegal prevention of a legitimate tackle attempt by a player in possession of the ball – which is largely what Rule 9.12 is supposed to be about.
In the 2002 rule-book it was announced that the proposed rewrite would produce a rule-book that would be complete, in that it would contain all briefing notes given to umpires at International Tournaments, and that in future additional Rule documents would be unnecessary. In the event the rule-book was stripped of the previously existing instruction and became a skeleton of its previous content. An action which was the opposite to what the FIH Rules Committee had declared would take place and which I regard as an act of vandalism. The UMB, far from being discontinued, has been greatly expanded. That might be a good thing except that in several areas the advice to umpires given in it conflicts with what the FIH Rules Committee have had printed in the published Rules of Hockey.. For example ‘forget lifted -think danger’ mantra in the UMB contradicts Rule 9.9. which explicitly forbids the raising the ball with a hit in any circumstances. The result has been that players routinely raise the ball into the circle with a hit (an action that at one time was specifically prohibited with any stroke) and umpires rarely see this action as being dangerous or potentially dangerous.
I could go on but this ‘comment’ is already over-long. The point I am making is that we have two conflicting documentary approached to Rule application to say nothing of the, different again, verbal briefings that umpires receive from FIH Umpire Managers. Part of the content of the one given prior to the Beijing Olympics was ‘let slip’ by a match commentator at the Beijing Olympics and the game has since suffered from the notion that an on target shot at the goal cannot be considered to be dangerous play (a direct contradiction of Rule13.m.) and this nonsense persisted through to the Rio Olympics. A version of it was contained in the Umpires Briefing Video produced prior to those Games.. Which declared that “defenders on the goal -line cannot not expect the protection of the Rules because the goal-line was properly the domain of the goalie”
We are at the stage now where the 2002 Circular from the FIH Executive which reaffirmed the FIH Hockey Rules Board (later renamed the FIH Rules Committee) as the sole Rule authority, is completely ignored and no-one really knows just who is responsible for the content of the Rules of Hockey or how they are to be applied.