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Mukudzei Chingwere Sports Reporter
ASPIRING ZIFA vice-presidential candidate Gift Banda turned on the heat on fellow contestants yesterday when he endorsed the re-arranged association’s polls, indicating he was happy and ready for the new December 16 date. In a move that virtually snubs overtures by presidential candidate Felton Kamambo to try and rally FIFA and the ZIFA Congress to have the election deferred to January next year, Banda revealed that his campaign team and he had embraced the amended date and were ready to intensify their lobbying for votes.

The former ZIFA board member, who, just like Kamambo was reinstated into the elections after initially being disqualified, described that development as water under the bridge and declared himself ready to tackle incumbent Omega Sibanda on December 16.

Banda was in the Central Region over the weekend on a campaign trail, where he told ZIFA councillors that he was ready to be the association’s next vice-president.

More important was the fact that contrary to indications that the reinstated candidates were not happy with the December 16 dates which the ZIFA Electoral Committee set in consultation with FIFA, Banda had turned his energy on campaigning.

Kamambo, in contrast, has been on a spirited campaign to try and have the elections, already moved from December 1, further deferred to next year.

But the former Central Region boss is likely to be short on support, with another reinstated candidate, Mlungisi Moyo, also giving his seal of approval to the roadmap set out by the Electoral Committee.

Banda also felt the new programme for elections had been done in line with the ZIFA statutes which convinced him into going ahead and participate.

The former Njube Sundowns boss was initially barred from contesting the upcoming polls amid an overhang of the Centralgate match-fixing conviction by a ZIFA committee still haunting him.

While Kamambo has been singing a chorus of discord among the formerly excluded candidates to have the polls moved to January to give them more time to prepare, Banda said he was  going with the set date.

“The date is standard, it is according to the electoral (law) and we are not looking at having it moved, we are working with that date.

“I will be starting my election campaign next week, for now we are telling the people that have always supported us that we are back officially and that we are contesting.

“There was a lot of doubt, some people did not know whether we were going to participate or not, so we are just telling them that I will be taking part,” said Banda.

Banda and Moyo seemed to have formed an election campaign pact ahead of the elections after they travelled to Gweru together for a meeting with the majority of the electorate from the Central Region on Saturday.

The aspiring vice-president, however, said that there was no pact with Moyo, insisting they were campaigning separately. He then addressed the councillors and gave his reasons why he was  asking for the right to take a leading role in the administration of the local game.

“It is not a pact, I am doing my thing and he is also doing his campaign. We are doing the campaigns separately.

“Having owned a football club for close to a decade, I felt football was taking a direction which was not right, so I decided to take part in these elections to bring some corrective measures.

“Currently, constitutionalism is not being followed and when I come these councillors should be empowered and play an oversight role which they are not doing at the moment.

“Again there is an issue of sponsorship, people want to be associated with something that is being run professionally and we want to bring accountability and transparency back at ZIFA,” said Banda.

Former Chicken Inn official Moyo also said “the absence of sponsorship has derailed the progress of Zimbabwean football and also took a swipe at the current leadership for allegedly reducing the funding of the game to begging.

“Zimbabwean football has been reduced to a begging bowl by leaders who think that football survives on donations and gate takings, we want to bring in proper business models.

“The major problem that has put us in this situation is lack of sponsorship, but sponsors have deserted our game because it is not being run properly.

“People are comfortable in talking part in something that has accountability, transparency, and proper corporate governance,” said Moyo