Prince Ali seeks FIFA vote suspension

Fifa presidential contender Prince Ali bin al Hussein has called on the international sport tribunal to suspend Friday’s world football election over the voting arrangements.

The Jordanian prince, one of five hopefuls, wants transparent voting booths used at the congress to find a replacement for Sepp Blatter. This has been rejected by Fifa’s election commission.

The scandal-tainted Fifa faces mounting pressure over arrangements for the vote in which Asian and European contenders Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa and Gianni Infantino are the favourites.

Jerome Champagne, a former Fifa official from France, has demanded that the world body cancel accreditations for the Asian Football Confederation and Uefa saying they will be used to lobby for Sheikh Salman and Infantino.

Prince Ali’s Paris lawyers said they had gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to get the vote suspended because Fifa would not agree to an emergency hearing on the voting booths.

“We have registered a new demand at the CAS asking for the suspension of the election scheduled for Friday February 26,” Szpiner, Toby, Ayela and Semerdjian said in a statement.

The lawyers had made a request for a CAS hearing about the booths. But they said Fifa’s electoral chiefs had blocked any CAS hearing before Friday’s vote.

“Fifa opposed our request for an accelerated procedure (at the CAS) so that these questions could be decided before February 26,” the lawyers said.