Snap Election for New Pan Am President

(ATR) A new president for the Pan American Sports Organization will be elected April 11 at an extraordinary general assembly in Miami, Florida.

The election will name a successor to Mario Vazquez Rana, who died February 8 after leading the organization for nearly 40 years. He was 82.

PASO represents the 41 National Olympic Committees of the Americas, one of five continental associations around the globe.

The PASO executive board set the election timetable at a meeting in Mexico City Monday, a day after a memorial service was held for Vazquez Rana at the headquarters of the Mexico Olympic Committee, where he once served as president.

Under the statutes of PASO, first vice president Ivar Sisniega is serving as an interim president until a successor is elected. The vote in April will only fill the final year of the term, which expires in 2016. Another election for a full four-year term would be held next year, in conjunction with elections for seats on the PASO executive board.

A question for PASO may be whether to elect a caretaker for the position for the next year instead of opening a full-fledged battle for the presidency among a number of candidates. Uruguay NOC president and IOC member Julio Cesar Maglione, who turns 80 this year and retires from the IOC, has said he is not interested in the PASO job but is said to be the favorite to stand for the short term.

Individuals said to be interested in the presidency include Chile NOC president Neven Ivan Ilic, whose name emerged this week. Other previously mentioned possible candidates include Carlos Nuzman of Brazil, president of the NOC as well as Rio 2016, St. Lucia IOC member and NOC president Richard Peterkin and Joaquin Puello of Dominican Republic, president of the 2003 Pan Am Games in Santo Domingo.

Whether any of these possibilities are interested in election to a term that ends next January remains to be seen.

"I would have to think about it," Peterkin tells Around the Rings about campaigning twice in one year. He observes that whoever is elected president in April may have the advantage of incumbency to run for a full term.

While Peterkin says he is interested in serving he says the job would require him to leave as partner of an accounting firm and make other adjustments to his life.

"It’s a big commitment,"says Peterkin.

Details for the election were not immediately available. The PASO board meeting lasted to the early evening, ending after this story was published.

According to the statutes of PASO, candidates for election need to be nominated at least 90 days before the vote. April 11 is but a month away. A deeper dig into the PASO statutes reveals that there is no language that clearly specifies how to hold a snap presidential election such as the one being organized.

The election would be the first serious contest for the PASO presidency since Vazquez Rana took office in the 1970s. Never facing any serious opposition since then, his reelection by acclamation has been the rule.

Although he had made no public declaration thathe would step down, it was widely assumed that Vazquez Rana would not seek reelection at the end of his term in 2016, when he would be 84.

The meeting in Miami, exact location to be determined, will be the second extraordinary general assembly for PASO this year. One was held in Mexico in January to fulfill requirements of the organization statutes after a general assembly scheduled last September was canceled due to the illness of Vazquez Rana, who was still incapable of attending the January meeting.

The choice of Miami for the PASO assembly could be a sign of the future as the organization makes a transition from the leadership of Vazquez Rana anchored in Mexico City.

Organización Editorial Mexicana, his newspaper empire, is headquartered in the capital city, a business connection that was helpful to the operation and logistics of PASO. Through the years, Mexico became the most common site for general assemblies while executive board meetings usually took place at the PASO headquarters.

Around the Rings has been told that there is considerable interest among the membership to relocate those headquarters to Miami. Miami is a veritable crossroads of the Americas making air travel to South Florida is easier and less costly for most of the PASO NOCs than flights to Mexico City.

Written by Ed Hula.

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