Sports tribunal rejects another FIFA voting protest

ZURICH — The Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected Thursday, for the second time in two days, a demand for transparent voting booths to be used in the FIFA presidential election. FIFA contender Jerome Champagne had made the bid in parallel to a move by Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, which was rejected Wednesday. The CAS said in a statement it had "rejected an urgent request for provisional measures" made by Champagne, a former FIFA official who is one of five candidates seeking to take Sepp Blatter's place as president in a vote Friday. Champagne and Prince Ali had wanted transparent voting booths and independent scrutineers used Friday "to ensure that the vote is conducted in secret." The vote is meant to be secret. But Champagne and Prince Ali had raised suspicions that some delegates would take a picture of their vote to prove to their regional confederation that they had backed an agreed candidate. CAF backs Salman Confederation of African Football vice president Suketu Patel expects 53 of his continent's 54 member associations to vote for Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa in the FIFA presidential election Friday. Patel's forecast Thursday came after CAF's executive committee had unanimously voted to back the Bahraini Sheikh last month. Voting in Friday's election is secret, and FAs are free to vote for whichever candidate they choose. Swiss candidate Gianni Infantino said on Monday he was confident of taking more than half the votes from Africa. A total of 207 votes are to be cast to select the new head of world soccer. UEFA opens way for a woman to sit on executive committee At least one woman will be elected to the executive committee of European soccer's governing body UEFA for the first time in May, delegates decided at an extraordinary Congress Thursday. Women's soccer is growing in popularity around the world, and proposals to give women more say in the running of the sport were part of a package of measures drawn up by global governing body FIFA last year in the wake of a huge corruption scandal. UEFA delegates voted to revise their statutes and reserve at least one position for a woman elected at Congress and not co-opted by the executive committee, as has been done in the past. The first woman likely to be elected at the Congress in Budapest in May will be Karen Espelund of Norway, who has been a co-opted member of the executive since 2011. Only one member from any country can sit on the executive committee but the statutes were changed to allow two members to sit from each country, if one is a woman. The decisions were taken on the eve of a FIFA congress to approve an overhaul of the sport's governance and elect a successor to the organization's president Sepp Blatter, who this week lost an appeal to overturn a ban for ethics violations. There will be six women on the new FIFA council. — Agencies