The Government’s rationalization and merger of public agencies’ policy must make an exception for a Sports Tribunal under the Sports Law

This past week, I had the honour of appearing before Parliament’s Committee on Education and Sports as part of a team from the Uganda Law Society (ULS) to present views on the Sports Bills (the Physical Activity and Sports Bill and the National Sports Bill “Magogo Bill”) currently at the second reading.
 
The Attorney General (AG), Mr. Kiryowa Kiwanuka, and his team also appeared concurrently with the ULS team. During the session, we got to understand that there had been a harmonization meeting between the government and the private member, Hon. Moses Magogo over the two Bills before Parliament, to which a report had been drafted to that effect.

As per the harmonization report and the AG's opinion, the idea of a Sports Tribunal would not pass because the government, according to a position taken by the Cabinet of Uganda, is embarking on the rationalizing and merging of many government agencies in order to cut down on the cost of public administration.

Further, there are currently very few sports disputes and/or cases that would warrant the creation of a whole body to settle them, and the legal regime under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act would suffice in the handling of sports disputes.

This column has previously carried a piece entitled "The fears around a Sports Tribunal: real or misplaced?" which readers are encouraged to go back to, but nonetheless, some of the contents of that article will be re-stated here in order to debunk some of the above notions raised by the Learned AG and the harmonization report concerning a Sports Tribunal.

Sports administration is traditionally a closed-door affair, and oftentimes a "special class" of people arrogates unto themselves the conduct of the affairs of the sector, a public good, to the exclusion of all and sundry.

All of this is steeped in sports' original claim to autonomy. As a result, sports disciplines more often than not have their own internal dispute resolution systems, which are, as I stated in my previous article "for lack of a better word, opaque, shrouded in mystery, lack accountability, and not transparent." It is because of this that some sports stakeholders feel that sports justice can only be dispensed by a national Court of law.

Sports dispute resolution was originally envisaged as best achieved through Arbitration and steeped in the principles and concepts of Arbitration especially those concerning confidentiality. Perhaps this is what informs the AG's view that sports disputes can effectively be handled under Arbitration.

However, the type of Arbitration under sports seems to have evolved over time and taken on a form of its own away from say what comes with International Commercial Arbitration. With the public interest involving sports, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an Arbitration body, for instance, publicizes many of its awards and is slowly starting to open up its proceedings to the public.

Sports Arbitration has evolved even more to the extent that it is now taking the shape of public courts and/ or tribunals. The Sports Disputes Tribunal in Kenya is an example of this.

The rules of procedure of course under these tribunals are more flexible in comparison to national courts in typical arbitration fashion. These sports tribunals, of course, have clearly laid out jurisdiction by statute, with both their original and appellate jurisdiction spelled out.

The Kenyan Sports Disputes Tribunal is for example an appellate body from decisions of in-house sports resolution mechanisms of national sports federations. These Sports Tribunals many a time even have a list of Probono Counsel hence bringing sports justice closer to home.

The jury is still out on whether these Sports Tribunals have kept sports disputes out of national courts or even enhanced sports justice where they have been embraced, but one thing that cannot be disputed is that they would do a better job handling sports disputes in light of the specificity of sports than national courts and also act as a serious check for sports governance in Uganda.

Access to justice at a Sports Tribunal would also undoubtedly be easier in comparison to Arbitration factoring in the costs incurred in Arbitration like Arbitrator fees et al.; here you would have the Tribunal's costs incurred by the taxpayer.

Interestingly, the Attorney General and the harmonization report are willing to create an anti-doping agency as a separate institution.

We can not have a Sports Law without a Sports Tribunal as we might not be able to remedy the mischief that is sports governance in Uganda as the Bills currently appear. Arbitration 101 will not suffice.

Ojakol is a Sports Lawyer, Partner at Matrix Advocates,
and Lecturer at IUEA
[email protected]

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