The next president of the Football Federation of Chile (FFCh) will be chosen by a council with 20 votes in total, according to La Tercera. The ANFP, the ANFA and four football organizations will each have a say. The outlet reports that this formula enjoys broad consensus within the industry, although it is not yet official.
There is a prerequisite: the FFCh must approve its new statutes. FIFA, football's world governing body, set a deadline of November 30. Until that document is in place, the system could change.
The urgency stems from a meeting held this Wednesday. Jair Bertoni, FIFA's director of Member Associations for the Americas, and Mariano Zavala, director of Member Associations at Conmebol (South American Football Confederation), met with Chilean officials and presented requirements for the governance of national football.
Those attending included Pablo Milad, president of the ANFP; Jorge Yunge, general secretary and a candidate for president of the organization headquartered in Quilín; and the four representatives of the Council of Presidents on the FFCh: Cecilia Pérez, Aníbal Mosa, Jorge Uauy, the other candidate, and Cristian Ogalde.
FIFA and Conmebol authorized Milad to remain in charge of the Federation during the process, with a deadline of February 28. As a result, whoever wins the ANFP election on November 19 will not automatically take over the FFCh, as Uauy and Yunge had expected.
Until the reform of the Sports Corporations Law (SADP), the ANFP president also headed the Federation. The new law requires the two bodies to be separated and had allowed until December of next year. The international bodies demanded that this timetable be accelerated.
At the ANFP, the presidents of the 32 clubs in the First Division and Primera B vote. The 16 First Division teams have double votes, while the 16 second-tier teams have single votes. At the Federation, however, the FFCh Council decides.
That council will have nine representatives from the ANFP and nine from the National Amateur Football Association (ANFA), each with one vote. They will be joined by four stakeholder groups recognized by the reform, each with half a vote.
The four groups are the Intercompany Union of Professional Footballers (Sifup), the National Association of Women Football Players (ANJUF), the Union of Professional Referees of Chile (Arbifup) and the Professional Association of Football Coaches of Chile.
Winning will require 11 votes, or 10.5 in practice. Neither the ANFP nor the ANFA will be able to prevail alone. A source quoted by La Tercera explained that the design seeks to encourage agreements with all stakeholder groups and make vote "buying" more difficult.
Milad defended the requirements and denied that there had been a scandal at the meeting. "What FIFA wants is stable governance, not transitional administrations," he said. He added that the idea is to hand the Federation over to a president for four years.
The timetable is therefore as follows: the ANFP election on November 19, statutes approved by November 30 at the latest, and the election of the new FFCh leader before February 28.
