Karachi
Lt. Gen Syed Arif Hassan (Retired) is set to have another stint as President of Pakistan Olympic Association after no other candidate came forward to contest against him for the position, electing him unopposed.
The elections for Pakistan Olympic Associations are scheduled to be held in Lahore on November 26, but they will now be mere a formality to officially announce another term for most of the officials.
General (retired) Arif Hassan was first elected as the POA president in 2004 after initially being named as the chairman of the organizing committee of the South Asian Games.
Since then he has been at the helm of affairs at the POA. Arif became controversial when he refused to follow the sports policy, architect by himself, and got elected for the third term as POA president in 2012. After a brief resistance and forming a parallel association, the government of Pakistan accepted Arif as the POA president.
He was again elected for the president POA office in 2016 after beating Akram Sahi of Athletics Federation to have a fourth term in office. Arif’s allies Syed Aqil Shah and Mohammad Khalid Mehmood are also elected to have yet another term in office as senior vice president and secretary general of the Pakistan Olympic Association.
Khalid Saleem, Zaheer Akhar, Chaudhry Yaqoob, Abid Gillani, Shaukat Javed, Begum Ishrat Ashraf and Fatima Lakhani are all elected as vice presidents, unopposed.
Mohammad Shafiq has also been elected to have another term as treasurer while Mohammad Jahangir has been appointed as deputy secretary general.—Agencies
