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Once-powerful Raouraoua withdraws from FIFA vote
Algeria's football federation president Mohamed Raouraoua attends a training session ahead of their match against Russia at the Major Antonio Couto Pereira stadium in Curitiba, June 25, 2014. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
By Mark Gleeson
17/02/2015
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Algeria's Mohamed Raouraoua has withdrawn from elections to FIFA's executive committee and will lose his place on the powerful 25-man group in a dramatic fall from grace.
Raouraoua was elected as one of Africa's four representatives four years ago in a swift rise up the ladder of soccer politics that marked him out as a potential future leader on his own continent.
The 67-year-old president of the Algerian Football Federation was due to be one of four candidates for two places on the committee to be decided at the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Congress in Cairo on April 7.
But he has pulled out, CAF said on Tuesday, leaving Jacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast, Tarek Bouchamaoui of Tunisia and Constant Omari Selemani of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the elections.
Anouma is an incumbent while the other two are attempting to win a place for the first time. Each of CAF's 54-member countries will vote in Cairo.
Raouraoua, a former head of Algerian television, was elected in 2011 to a seat traditionally held by a candidate from the southern region of the continent in a surprise flouting of previous convention.
Although it was not written into its statutes, CAF had previously chosen its executive committee members for world soccer's ruling body FIFA from various geographical regions with one seat automatically held by the organisation's president. However, such was Raouraoua's initial appeal that this tradition was dispensed with.
The Algerian was touted as a possible successor to long-standing CAF president Issa Hayatou but has since been frozen out, according to African football administrators, and he felt it prudent to withdraw to avoid the possibility of a humiliating defeat.
In April, CAF are to formalise rules on the election of FIFA executive committee members.
From 2017 they will reserve one seat for the CAF president, one for a French speaker, one for a candidate from an English speaking country and one to be shared among the Arab-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries. The pair elected in April will serve two years.
(Editing by Tony Jimenez)
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