German minister calls on FIFA to reform voting system

Posted by  
The interior minister who is also responsible for sport, told newsmen it was a problem that every nation had one vote, “although the footballing importance of the countries is different”

FIFA German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, on Monday called on FIFA to reform its voting system.
De Maiziere said the corruption indictments on senior football officials and the re-election of Joseph Blatter as president of world football’s governing body showed that urgent change was needed.
The interior minister who is also responsible for sport, told newsmen it was a problem that every nation had one vote, “although the footballing importance of the countries is different”.
He said in Germany, this was different within the German football federation as larger state football federations had more votes than smaller state federations.
According to him, it is a similar system within the Bundesrat, which represents the 16 federal states of Germany.
Report says the FIFA congress elected Blatter for a fifth four-year term and all 209 member federations had a single vote, irrespective of size.
It means, for example, that FIFA’s world’s worst-ranked nation, Anguilla, which did not have a federation until 1990 and played a first international a year later, also had one vote.
It added that it has the same say in voting as world champions and four-time World Cup winners Germany, whose federation has some seven million members.
dpa/NAN.