Brazil’s swimming federation held a general assembly this week to change statutes that conflict with FINA rules.
The meeting took place on Tuesday, with Brazil’s federation, the CBDA, adjusting its statutes to regain FINA compliance. That comes after FINA told the federation in June that it would not recognize the results of the CBDA presidential election.
It’s still not entirely clear what the direct disagreement is between the CBDA’s previous statutes and FINA’s rules, but Globo.com suggests the issue has to do with the Pele Law, a set of rules originally passed to keep footballer Pele from changing clubs, but that now governs all aspects of sports within Brazil.
The CBDA elected Miguel Cagnoni as its new president this summer, but FINA originally said it wouldn’t recognize the results of that election and threatened to suspend the federation if changes were not made. FINA President Julio Maglione (who won reelection himself this summer) indicated in a Globo.com interview that the CBDA election could be accepted by FINA if some changes were made to CBDA statutes to bring them in line with FINA’s rules.
The statutory changes were passed, but according to another Globo report, the new Board of Directors for the CBDA is still up in the air. The Board appointees received 15 votes for and 10 against, with 2 votes abstaining. The Globo report notes that the issue will be “discussed by the FINA Bureau at the November meeting.”
Brazil’s new electoral system was also established as an electoral college made up of state federations, athletes, clubs and other representatives. You can read more about this system on the Globo site here. According to Globo, there was a proposal to reduce the Athletes Commission from 6 votes to 1 vote, but that proposal was rejected. The CBDA’s lawyer Marcelo Franklin You can read his clarification here.was the one to propose the change; he disagreed with Globo’s original reporting of the matter, claiming the next day that he had asked for the Athletes Commission to have its votes reduced from 6 to 1, but also that 1 vote would be added for an athlete from each federation, bringing the votes back up to 6.
