Tema Youth president, Wilfred Osei Kwaku ‘Palmer’ has dismissed claims that his disqualification from the last FA election was orchestrated by people close to government or members of the defunct Normalisation Committee (NC).
Speaking to Angel Sports, Palmer disclosed that ‘a person very active in football administration’ in the country altered a report and specifically designed it to disqualify him from the Presidential election won by Kurt Okraku.
In the interview, hesaid government was not behind the decision, insisting that the higher authorities had no hands in the decision to bar him from the GFA’s Presidential election race.
He also somewhat absolved the Normalization Committee from full blame, revealing that some key active members of the Ghana football fraternity plotted the decision to disqualify him.
“My disqualification was an agenda that was deliberately championed by ‘some football people’ and not the government,” Osei Palmer told Accra based Angel FM.
“My disqualification from the GFA presidential election was a grand scheme to take me out. I know those who wrote the report to disqualify me. It was not from any member of the Normalisation Committee.
“A very active respectable person in the football fraternity altered the document.”
Palmer was among the favourites to win the Ghana FA presidential election in October 2019 but a decision from the Vetting Committee for the Normalisation Committee banned him from the contest.
The Vetting Committee, chaired by lawyer Frank Davies, disqualified him from the race claiming he had breached the Ghana FA financial regulations for failing to pay a 10 per cent fee to the federation over the transfer of Joseph Paintsil.
The Vetting Committee ruled that Palmer’s failure to pay the 10 per cent due the GFA over the transfer of his former star winger from Tema Youth to Belgian giants Genk shows he doesnot have the integrity to lead the federation.
Palmer subsequently dragged the Normalisation Committee of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Switzerland claiming he was unfairly disqualified from the race.
With just under a week before CAS delivers its verdict, Palmer says there were some unseen forces within the football fraternity at play to exclude him.
Kurt Okraku subsequently won the race to become the new Ghana FA president and has been in charge of the federation since October last year.
CAS is expected to rule on the decision September 1 – the same date that the GFA holds its congress in Prampram.-Ghanasoccernet
