The UAE swimming entered a spiral that harmed its activity, which was affected by administrative instability, after the postponement of the elections to form the Board of Directors of the Swimming Association for the new session 2020-2024, which was scheduled for this May 26, knowing that it is the third time that the elections have been postponed, as the first was scheduled. On October 21, 2020, by a decision of the International Swimming Federation (FINA) due to the failure to adopt the amendments made to the statute and election regulations by the International Federation before the start of the elections.

The Elections Committee headed by Muhammad Al-Amiri set another date for February 2021, but the program was not announced or implemented in light of the repercussions, so the third postponement, which was scheduled (May 26), came with the decision of the Swimming Federation’s Board of Directors to postpone the elections until the extraordinary general assembly was held to approve the regulations based on the On June 2, the International Federation requested the presence of a representative of 'FINA' to supervise the procedures of the General Assembly.

Al-Khaleej Sports met with Abdullah Al-Wahaibi, Secretary-General of the Swimming Federation, to clarify the ambiguity surrounding the pending elections, which entered a complex calculation between suspension and postponement. Al-Wahaibi revealed that the electoral process that was scheduled (May 26) was not canceled, but postponed to be held. On the basis of the decisions to be adopted by the General Assembly in its extraordinary meeting scheduled for next June 2.

Al-Wahaibi added: “The International Swimming Federation (FINA) has already approved the statute and the electoral list attached to it, awaiting the final approval of the General Assembly at its next meeting, noting that the accreditation process took 8 months between receiving and responding in the correspondence that took place between the UAE and international federations and started on September 22 2020 that the UAE Swimming Federation will receive Fina’s response to postpone the elections, and the final decision on holding the elections and their manner will be determined by the decision of the General Assembly at the same meeting.”

Asked about clarifications of what was mentioned, the Secretary-General of the Swimming, Water Polo and Diving Federation said: “The General Assembly has two options: the first is that if it insists on completing the electoral process to be conducted according to the old electoral list 2017, in this case the elections will take place based on the old list and we will continue from Where we stopped, starting from the last procedure taken by the Elections Committee (the election committee’s approval of the names of the candidates), provided that the program phases would be completed successively with new dates.”

Regarding the second option, Al-Wahaibi said: “If the General Assembly adopts the new statute and the new electoral list attached to it (the 2021 Regulation), in this case, the electoral procedures will be repeated through a new program set by the election committee selected by the General Assembly, provided that it is carried out according to the new conditions for the candidates if Approved by the General Assembly.

Regarding the current position of the International Federation regarding the adoption of the new statute and the electoral list attached to it, which is long overdue, he said: “The International Federation has already adopted the system and the electoral list attached to it, after making some minor amendments that it made regarding the requirements for candidacy, so a request was made to hold the extraordinary general meeting. For final approval on June 2nd.