ZURICH: Sepp Blatter won the FIFA presidency for a fifth time on Friday after his challenger Prince Ali bin al Hussein withdrew just before a scheduled second round.
The veteran Swiss powerbroker fell seven votes short of the required 140 majority in the first round of voting.
Just before the second round was about to start the Jordanian prince, a FIFA vice president who had campaigned on the need for reform, withdrew thanking those “brave enough” to vote for him.
Blatter, 79, has been Fifa’s president since 1998 and has defied European calls to stand down as corruption scandals tarnish the multi-billion dollar body’s image.
A new election triumph in the midst of a corruption scandal established Blatter as the politician who can come through any storm.
Unapologetically divisive, Blatter has had to deal with scandal virtually since his first day in office.
And Blatter knows that he still has a long way to go to reach the aim he outlined Friday of getting Fifa in a safe port “where the boats will stop rocking.”
“He sees it all like a marathon. And he is one of the most determined men you will meet,” said one Fifa executive member about the 79-year-old Swiss official.
Blatter, who has been at Fifa for 40 years, 17 as its president, went into the vote revered by some as the beautiful game’s ‘Jesus’ and scorned by others as a rogue clinging to power.
The arrest on Wednesday of seven Fifa officials wanted by US authorities for accepting tens of millions of dollars of bribes seemed like a hammer blow to the veteran sports baron.
But he came through allegations about ‘brown envelopes’ handed out before his first election in 1998 and the collapse of the ISL sports marketing empire.
This week, Blatter’s power base in Africa and Asia remained firm. Blatter said people around the world unfairly held him “ultimately responsible” for everything that goes on in football and a fifth term was won.
Blatter believes however that his jealous rivals no longer apply the notion of fair play in their backroom battles with him. He told the Congress he had a “question” about the timing of the arrests, two days before the election.
“In my 40 years at Fifa I have learned to live with hostility and resentment,” he said recently.
“However as the German language proverb puts it: sympathy is free, but envy must be earned.”
There is a lot to envy.
Blatter is in 70th place on the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people — the only sports leader in the group jostling behind the likes of Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama.
The former amateur footballer — an old fashioned striker — joined Fifa in 1975 from a position marketing Swiss watches.
He became secretary general in 1981 and was elected to the top job in 1998 after another controversial president, Brazilian Joao Havelange, finally ended his 24 year reign.
Blatter, who also worked as a public relations official and general secretary of the Swiss ice hockey federation, claims credit for building Fifa’s financial muscle — $1.5 billion in cash reserves. When he joined FIFA it was in a small Zurich building with about 10 staff. One story says that it was Blatter who went to the bank to get a loan when they could not be paid. (AFP)
