ISLAMABAD: Arif Saeed and Khalid Mehmood have been elected unopposed as the President and Secretary of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) while elections on four out of 11 seats will be held on Monday (today) in Lahore (The News broke the story in December 24 edition).
The election to the offices of President and Secretary was unanimous as both have the support of the federal and Punjab governments and the Olympic federations which have a major say in deciding the fate of a candidate.
“All’s well that ends well. It is a win-win situation for all. The federal government wanted to have Arif Saeed (Services Industries) as President of POA and more than two-thirds of Olympic federations wanted to have Khalid Mehmood as secretary. Both succeeded in getting what they wanted,” a federation official said.
He claimed that POA-associated federations wanted to have a strong man as the president POA. “Since both Khalid Mehmood and Arif Saeed have strong bonding, their election to the key posts will help the National Olympic Committee make a strong impact at the national and international levels,” he said.
The official said that Arif Saeed could use his office to get the deserving support for the federations. “The government is merely giving peanuts (from Rs1 million to Rs3.5 million) to federations as annual grants. Hopefully, during Arif Saeed’s tenure, federations will get their just share,” he said.
According to the official notification of the Election Commissioner Pervaiz Iqbal Mir, no other candidate had filed papers for the two posts. Ms Fatima Lakhani has also been elected unopposed as the Senior Vice President.
Election to the posts of vice president will be held Monday (today). There are three nominees for two available slots: Mohammad Aamir Jan, Maj (rtd) Majid Waseem, and Col (rtd) Raja Wasim Ahmad.
Ishrat Ashraf and Andleeb Sandhu have been elected unopposed as the lady vice presidents. Muhammad Jahangir was also elected unopposed as the Deputy Secretary General. Aamer Malik (treasurer) has also been elected unopposed to the post.
Aismaul Haq, Wajid Ali and Zulfikhar Ali Butt will contest elections for two available posts of associate secretary. Tehmina Asif has been elected unopposed as the lady associate secretary.
Hafiz Imran Butt, Mohammad Irshad Sattar, Sadaf Akram and Murtaza Hussain Bangash will be contesting on three available seats for representative Olympic Sports. Four lady candidates are in the run for executive member posts. They are Sumaira Sattar, Sana Ali, Anma Tanvir and Shamim Akhtar.