After Kalmadi’s ouster, Dahlan needs to clean up Asian athletics

After Kalmadi’s ouster, Dahlan needs to clean  up Asian athletics

So Suresh Kalmadi is no longer the president of the Asian Athletics Association (AAA). After 13 years at the helm of the continental body, he was ousted from his post by Qatar’s Dahlan al-Hamad at an election held in his hometown, Pune, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Dahlan won 20-18, but the significant figure here is not two, the margin of the Qatari’s victory. It is 18, the number of votes Kalmadi managed to garner. For someone who is out of jail on bail, it shows the tremendous clout the Indian still wields in Asian sporting circles.And that is the tragedy of yesterday’s election. Why and how was a man who spent considerable time behind bars and still has a mountain of corruption charges pending against him allowed to contest the high-profile election? And who are the 18 cronies who shamelessly voted for him?Because secret balloting is one of the features of any democratic election, we will never know the answer to the second question. As to how Kalmadi got to run for re-election to the post, the slow, loophole-ridden and heavily politicised Indian policing and legal set-up is largely to blame. In a country with fool-proof systems, Kalmadi would have been convicted and sentenced to several years in prison, automatically rendering him incompetent to contest any election.Kalmadi’s reign as the president of the AAA ran almost concurrently with his job as the chief of the scandal-ridden Indian Olympic Association (IOA), but it was his stint as the chief of the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games organising committee that catapulted him to global notoriety with a string of unsavoury headlines that dented India’s image like never before.The shoddy organisation of the Delhi Commonwealth Games—the most expensive in the event’s history at $6bn—led to Kalmadi becoming a public hate-figure. He was roundly booed by crowds during the two-week event whenever he made an appearance at a venue.To make matters worse, Kalmadi hardly showed any hint of remorse.  On the contrary, he brazenly claimed all the way that the corruption charges were politically motivated. The IOA got its just desserts when it was suspended by the International Olympic Committee in December last year, before an agreement with Indian officials in May 2013 resulted in a compromise of sorts.Following all the tumult under Kalmadi, Dahlan’s election to the top AAA post has come as a boon for continental athletics. The Qatari is also a vice-president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and has a lot of experience in administrative matters.It’s no secret that the standard of Asian athletics had slipped over the 13 years when Kalmadi was in power. Dahlan, therefore, needs to restore the continent’s credibility on the global front, which had taken a beating under the Indian’s reign.