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Sports minister bows down to Kalla, revising decree on PSSI

Soccer blues: Thousands of people in the Papuan provincial capital of Jayapura take to the streets on Tuesday, denouncing Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi’s move to freeze the Soccer Association of Indonesia (PSSI), which resulted in the cancelation of an Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup match between local Persipura and the Malaysian club Pahang

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Wed, May 27, 2015

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Sports minister bows down to Kalla, revising decree on PSSI

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span class="inline inline-center">Soccer blues: Thousands of people in the Papuan provincial capital of Jayapura take to the streets on Tuesday, denouncing Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi'€™s move to freeze the Soccer Association of Indonesia (PSSI), which resulted in the cancelation of an Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup match between local Persipura and the Malaysian club Pahang. JP/Nethy Dharma Somba

Vice President Jusuf Kalla revealed on Tuesday that Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi has proposed a draft revision of his ministerial decree on the suspension of the Soccer Association of Indonesia (PSSI).

'€œIt is the minister himself who proposed the revision [of the ministerial decree], not me. I only helped him revise some wording,'€ Kalla said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.

According to the Vice President, the revision basically ruled that the domestic Indonesian Soccer League (ISL) could still be managed by the PSSI under the supervision of a transitional team that had been established by Imam.

'€œThe PSSI can handle the competition with the assistance of the transitional team that is in charge of monitoring and evaluating national soccer,'€ Kalla said.

He added that Imam did not propose three options to him. '€œWe were only talking about that one option [to revise the decree],'€ he said.

Imam issued the suspension of the PSSI on April 17 after the soccer body refused to exclude two '€œlegally flawed'€ clubs from the ISL as recommended by the ministry'€™s sanctioned Indonesian Professional Sports Body (BOPI).

The PSSI filed a lawsuit against the minister'€™s decision at the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) on April 22. The court on Monday issued a provisional decision ordering the minister to allow the PSSI to continue operating.

After a meeting with Kalla on Monday, Imam said that the Vice President wanted the decree to be revoked, but added '€œthat option has not even been a consideration'€.

'€œWe have three options: obeying the decree, revoking it, or revising it. We will study further the good and bad consequences of each of the options. We will take into consideration the PTUN provisional decision as well,'€ said Imam on Tuesday.

According to the ministry'€™s spokesman Gatot S. Dewa Broto, they preferred option number three.

Senior journalist and soccer pundit Anton Sanjoyo said that revising the ministerial decree to allow the domestic league to resume was the most possible option.

'€œWe all know that the PSSI is full of bad people, but killing the competition is never a good option,'€ he said.

'€œThe core problem is professionalism within the PSSI. To address it does not necessarily take a suspension of the PSSI. The price would be too high,'€ Anton said, adding that the PSSI must agree to accept the transitional team as a monitoring body as a '€œwin-win'€ solution.

'€œYou don'€™t take unconstitutional measures to fight bad people,'€ he added.

PSSI chairman La Nyalla Mattalitti and other executives are in Zurich, Switzerland, to lobby FIFA, to convince the world soccer ruling body to not impose sanctions on the association. Should Indonesia fail to resolve the dispute by May 29, FIFA will likely suspend Indonesia'€™s membership in the federation.

FIFA sanctions could include annulment of Indonesia'€™s participation in FIFA-supported tournaments, including the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup and the SEA Games next month in Singapore.

The 2014 ISL champion Persib Bandung and runner-up Persipura Jayapura are currently playing in the AFC Cup.

In Jayapura, Papua, hundreds of fans of Persipura staged a protest on Tuesday on the streets, blaming the minister for the cancelation of a round 16 match of the AFC Cup between Persipura Jayapura and Pahang FC of Malaysia after the latter'€™s four foreign players were denied entry into Indonesia. Pahang manager Fahrizal Hassan said his club should advance to the quarterfinals.

'€œThe rule book says that we should be given a walkover, but we'€™ll have to wait for the AFC to decide on the matter,'€ he said as reported by Reuters.

'€œIt'€™s ludicrous to be in this situation in this modern era. We did everything we could to play against Persipura, but we were let down by the PSSI'€™s incompetence.'€

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