By: Baboucarr Fallaboweh
The two aspiring presidential candidates for the top post at the Gambia Football Federation in Lamin Kaba Bajo and Sadibou Kamaso have lined up solid female representatives. Still, stakeholders are yearning for Women’s Football clubs to have voting rights like their male counterparts.
The incumbent president weighs on the debate and is joined by Kamaso, his challenger for this year’s election.
Lamin Kaba Bajo maintains that the gap between the male and football administrators should be closed.
“It’s a process; it’s not on the table now; the gap when you talk about football administration between males and females is still vast. But, if you look back, we are gradually empowering women in football. Previously everybody running women’s football was predominately male; committees of females were 100% while the women association members comprised 90%. So, therefore, we are coming there “. He stated.
“It’s my opinion, because of their special nature, if you give them too much power, too many politics will get into it. The federation fully funds women’s football, contrary to the male league. We don’t want politics to tear them apart. Maybe that was the wisdom of the Constitution’s authors that we have now. This is even how it works across the subregion. I don’t want people to give any timeline of the possibility of extending women voting right from three to the desired number.”
Alieu Wenger, who covers women’s football with his team, shed light on equal representation of voting rights, saying it’s never enough.
“For women’s football to move forward, we need voting rights. If you look at the situation now, our club president’s stakeholders can’t decide the future of their clubs when it comes to the leagues.”
Kamaso, the group leader, restored confidence as he hoped women would move up the ladder in football administration.
“We are clear in our starting XI, where we said we will advocate for women football clubs to have equal voting rights. The issue of 4th and 5th Vice Presidents was our idea. We put these images so people can yearn for what is coming; people will be curious to know what is coming. Female Vice President candidate, we are not bringing a 4th vice president because it’s not in the Constitution. He who loves women’s football must do just more than talk about it.” He added
