ZOC polls skirt Games conundrum
THE Zimbabwe Olympic Committee annual meeting yesterday agreed to go ahead with their elections next year despite the postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games.
ZOC usually have the electoral general meeting in the year immediately following the close of an Olympic Games.
However, this year’s Games were pushed back to 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and ZOC president, Admire Masenda, pointed out it had some implications on the national Olympic Committee’s constitution.
And, the board had to take the issue to their constituents where it was agreed they will go ahead with the elections.
“The postponement of the Olympic Games had, aside from the obvious implications for the athletes and preparations, key constitutional implications, on the ZOC constitution,’’ said Masenda.
“Elections, in one instance, are said should be held no later than eight months after the Olympic Games and, therefore, what has always happened traditionally is that they will be held in April of every year, which sort of gets to that eight months period, after the Olympic Games.
“However, within the same constitution is the provision that an executive or executive board members will be elected for a period of up to four years, if it says eight months after the Olympic Games we could have easily say we wait until the Olympic Games next year, and have the elections thereafter.
“However, we would have violated another aspect of the constitution where people in office would have served longer than four years and we would have taken away from the new people in the office a period of time.
“So, as a board, we resolved that we bring this matter up and brought it to the attention of the general assembly to say this is the situation, your options are these, you can either postpone until after the Games or you can have the elections in April as per schedule and proceed from then on.
“And, the general assembly have said the elections must go on as per tradition April.’’
The other topical issue was the term of office limits, which is now eight years, but there is still room for one to serve for more than eight years.
“The other key issue was terms of office which needed some tweaking and clarity, so coming out is the issue of term limits, (which) were limited for eight years.
“So, if you are a board member for eight years, after eight years, you would leave.
“But, ultimately, we were saying yes you can continue to serve and vie for a new office, and start a new cycle, of eight years.
“So there is a possibility under this thing that you could be in the ZOC board for 24 years, you start eight years as executive board member, eight years as vice president, eight years president.’’
Masenda will not be running for re-election next year, meaning there will be a new ZOC president.
Steven Charandura, Portia Chiwetu and Keith Kachambwa were also declared members of the nomination and elections committee.
Masenda also announced that ZOC chief executive, Anna Mguni, will be leaving the organisation at the end of the year.
She has given notice she would not be renewing her contract that expires in December.