RNOC elections shifted to Nov. 29

ELECTIONS of the new National Olympic Committee executive committee will be held on November 29 at the Sports Ministry headquarters. Initially, the elections were set to be held on December 27 before the outgoing executive committee was dissolved by the Minister of Sports and Culture. Joseph Habineza, last week. The interim committee led by Aimable Bayingana, who also doubles as the cycling federation president, reached the decision to change the election date yesterday in a crisis meeting held at Amahoro stadium. The meeting attracted 18 sports federations and associations among the 24 federations which comprise Rwanda Olympic Committee thus exceeding the required 2/3 of the total federations required to convene a general assembly. Among other resolutions reached at the general assembly, federations agreed to extend days for aspirants to submit in their candidatures and the new deadline has been set for next Friday. The general assembly also overturned the minister’s decision of suspending the entire executive committee but agreed on suspending indefinitely the executive bureau (president, vice president, secretary general and treasurer general) headed by Ignace Beraho. This means that the rest of the executive committee (commissions) will continue to perform their duties until the elections are held. Volleyball federation boss, Charles Uyisenga, was named to head the electoral commission which has been mandated to organize and prepare elections. The polls which would have been held last year were pushed to later this year to enable all federations to meet the official legal requirements before the new RNOC executive committee comes into office. But no rule will restrict federations from participating in the scheduled elections as earlier clarified in the procedures for the December 27 elections. Ends