As indicated earlier, in connection with my articles about the type of changes that are needed in the IHF By-Laws, http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.857 http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.868 http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.877 the IHF hastily put together a ‘working group’ http://www.ihf.info/front_content.php?idcat=285&idart=2136to review and discuss all the relevant issues. The group already met, and it seems it miraculously managed to cover all aspects in a meeting during the course of a day. This gives a rather clear indication of how superficial the treatment of the issues was or, more likely, how narrow the focus of the discussions was. Clearly, there are a few, very few, issues that the current regime really finds interesting. One can guess that they involve primarily the Executive itself.
But these are merely assumptions, because transparency exists in IHF only when it is convenient. It is clear that proposals from the working group, which presumably now will quickly cease to exist, will go directly to the IHF Council members, without any opportunity for all the people around the handball world, who elected these Council members, to have a chance to know what is being proposed and to attempt to influence their representatives in the Council. This is likely to serve as a good illustration of what kind of By-Law changes could be anticipated…
Friends of handball in all the continental and national federations: surely you are not content with this kind of process, where you will not even know what the issues are, let alone what the proposals will be, until they are placed in front of you for the ‘extraordinary’ IHF Congress in Rome. Surely you will want all the time from now on to review and form your own opinions about what the working group has discussed and proposed, and perhaps even more important: what it has failed to discuss and propose. Everyone knows that, at the time of the Congress, there is little hope for an individual national federation to bring up successfully its own ideas and/or to resist the ideas that are presented as the opinion of the Council. Act now! Demand to know!
IHF By-Laws: Desirable Changes (Part 1): http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.857
IHF By-Laws: Desirable Changes (Part 2): http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.868
IHF By-Laws: Desirable Changes (Part 3): http://teamhandballnews.com/news.php?item.877
IHF By-Laws: http://www.ihf.info/upload/Manual/IHF_STATUTS_CHAP_01_GB.pdf
IHF By-Law Working Group Members: http://www.ihf.info/front_content.php?idcat=285&idart=2136to
IHF: Meeting Days at the IHF Office: http://www.ihf.info/front_content.php?idcat=57&idart=2308