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Some of the changes are cosmetic and others ground breaking.
According to the president of the Normalisation Committee, Joseph Owona, Fecafoot has been redefined as a sports federation and not simply as an association as in the previous statute of the federation. Another innovation is that civil administrators will no longer vote in the assembly meetings of Fecafoot. The government henceforth has barely two representatives at the general assembly. Membership at the general assembly has also been reduced to cover both professional and amateur football. The leagues have equally been decentralised and special leagues created to replace commissions such as the Professional football league, the Youth football league and the women’s football league. Concerning the elections, the Secretary General will be put on a technical leave in case he is candidate for the presidency of the federation and his duties carried out by a technical secretariat during the period of his absence.
However, the most fundamental change concerns article 78 of the statute. In the draft statute, the jurisdiction of the Chamber of Conciliation and Arbitration of the National Olympic and Sports Committee was not recognised as litigations could be addressed directly to the Court of Arbitration for Sports, CAS, without passing through the National Olympic Committee. Critics of this provision said it was in violation of the sports charter enacted by government which stipulates that all sports federations in Cameroon should recognise the authority of the Olympic Committee and recourse to it in matters of litigations as a last resort at the national level. Finally this provision was inscribed in the new statutes after a heated debate.
