Cycling Association election, but which rule will govern?

The Belize Cycling Association will be holding an election for officers on Saturday in Santa Elena Town.  Incumbent president Emil Moreno is being challenged by Belize City Deputy Mayor Deon Leslie, who told News Five earlier today that executives within the current association are trying to implement a proposed constitution that was never ratified by the National Sports Council. The move, Leslie says, is a deliberate attempt at disqualifying other candidates from challenging the seats.

Dion Leslie, Candidate for B.C.A. President

Dion Leslie

“The elections scheduled for tomorrow, the twenty-fourth of November 2012 at the Aguada Hotel in San Ignacio, Cayo. The meeting is for the outgoing executive to present their financials for the past year and then thereafter, the elections for a new executive should take place. And I say should because there are some misconceptions going on and there are some people mudding the waters saying that the elections will only be by delegates, but it can’t be by that. It has to go according to the constitution that was lodged with the Sports Council and that was lodged the thirtieth of January of this year. In that constitution it says nothing about delegates; it is still an association. When you move into delegates you become a federation. Now the idea is to essentially down the road turn the association into a federation and you have district associations. And therefore you have delegates and all of those delegates make up or vote at a federation. But as of now, it is still an association and in an association, the executive is elected by all registered members of that association.”

Isani Cayetano

“My understanding is that there may seem to be something afoot to sort of try to box you or any other contenders for that particular seat out of the race. Can you speak to us on why maybe they are trying to apply a particular statute or a resolution from 2006 that was not recognized by the Sports Council?”

Dion Leslie

“Well there was no resolution. Just a brief background on it, in 2006, the then president—I believe Mister Melvin Torres—drafted up a new constitution that was in accordance with a federation and went by the UCI guidelines. That was never taken to an AGM and therefore was never ratified. Therefore, it could have never been submitted to the Sports Council as a new constitution. And that’s what they are trying to use to say this is the constitution. But that’s not so because it was never voted on by the general members of the then association and it was not submitted to the National Sports Council as the accepted constitution for the Belize Cycling Association. So based on that, they are trying to use that specific constitution but they can’t it’s is illegal. As I said, they have to sue what is lodged by the Sports Council and the Sports Council will be present at the meeting to oversee the meeting. And they will only go according to what constitution was lodged to them and that’s the current constitution that still has it as an association. I know that myself along with the assemble slate that we have can bring great things for the sport. Over the past couple years; the sport has been on a sharp decline when you look at it. And if you ask any fan or any cycling enthusiast, they will tell you that it has gone down in the past years and we have some ideas that we want to bring back the sport to the level. We want to bring back racing to the sport; we want to bring back sponsorship to the sport; we want to bring back that fan base and we have certain plans in place to bring that back apart from technical aspect where we want to strengthen the current constitution. We want to bring more training for coaches; more training for officials. There are a lot of technical things that we want to do apart from general things. One basic thing I always tell people; there is not even an office for the cycling association. Something as basic like that we want to establish.”