Just in case anyone is still interested, the Football Association of Singapore (FAS) will be holding its inaugural election on Saturday (April 29), and the winning team will get to chart the course of Singapore football for the next few years.

Regrettably, the poll has been completely overshadowed by an ongoing saga surrounding a half-million dollar donation to the ASEAN Football Federation (AFF), which has since resulted in a police investigation.

The election will see "Team LKT" led by 64 year-old lawyer Lim Kia Tong facing off with "Team Game Changers", led by Tiong Bahru FC and Hougang United chairman Bill Ng, the man in the limelight recently.

As the election approaches, Team LKT has been struggling for airtime to refocus outside attention to the election as the saga rumbles on.

Which is probably why, in a hastily arranged dialogue session that lasted more than an hour with the media on April 24, Team LKT members, including Lim, Bernard Tan and S. Thavaneson took the opportunity to speak, sometimes in an aggrieved and exasperated tone, about their position on the donation saga and their views on Singapore football.

Mothership.sg was invited to the media session held at a Komoco Motors' conference room. Here are 5 things we observed:

1. Team LKT knows that they have an image problem

Lim, Tan, Thavaneson and Edwin Tong (Lawyer and Member of Parliament) were all members of the previous FAS council, serving as Vice-Presidents and Council members.

The donation saga has further damaged the team, who had been working hard to shed the image of being tied too closely with the previous leadership that had been widely perceived as incompetent and disconnected to the ground.

Besides Edwin who could not make it to the session, the others who were present made a point to describe the change that they will bring about if elected, which include:

a) A task force to look into governance and affiliation issues

b) Structure and Organization of FAS

c) Allocation and development of pitches

d) Competition

e) Development

2. They don't know what they don't know, hence they cannot take responsibility.

Lim said that council members were kept in the dark over the $500,000 donation that Tiong Bahru FC made to the AFF in 2015 as the matter was never raised in any council discussions or meetings.

"In all honesty, myself and all the other council members did not know how and who triggered this idea of donation or sponsership to the AFF. And this is a fact. There was no discussion, this subject matter was never raised at the council meeting, neither was it raised at the Executive Committee meeting."

Tan pointed out that it was "a highly unique transaction" as FAS rarely receives donations. He said:

"From the council point of view, if the President and the General Secretary of the association knew about it but never informed the council about it, then it is very hard to say, why didn't the council discussed it, because it was just never revealed. "

"While there is a notion of collective responsibility, but I think you and the public would also agree that we can only be responsible if we know about it. And we didn't know about it. And as far as I checked with fellow council members, some of who are not even in the running for the election, they were never informed. It's hard for us to take responsibility for something we did not know."

3. Former FAS President Zainudin clearly did not work well with his council.

Being associated with a perceived dysfunctional and rudderless organization is hardly a good starting point to run in an election.

Everyone at the session was too polite to say anything, but there were enough signs to note what they thought about Zainudin's leadership style.

Lim said:

"To give you a better picture of how the leadership functioned under the previous president, it's not that we are distancing ourselves, we are just telling the facts. Now, it's not that his leadership is wrong."

According to Tan:

"The council is actually an advisory body. The President is conferred quite significant powers in the FAS, you can argue whether that's appropriate. Again, one of the things we can discuss is whether there could be approval matrices developed in a way that certain size of transactions should be discussed in the council. But the truth is, now the President have quite sizable authority, and the Council operates as an advisory body for the president."

"We still don't know what the issues are. Let the issues come out. People have different styles of running things, they will have very good reasons why they are doing what they are doing, so let's wait and see."

4. Governance issues need to be fixed

It is clear from the donation saga and the questions that were thrown up, that FAS has to improve its internal governance, empower its council members and also seek to broaden its role in supervising the development of all football clubs in Singapore

Currently, as what Tan told the media

a) The FAS does not have a donation policy.

"If you ask the question now, should we have a donation policy, I think the answer is yes. We should know when donations are given to the FAS, there needs to be a due diligence of the source of funds, to understand that the funds received are meant for a purpose and they are legal."

b) The FAS does not have regulatory authority over the National Football League (NFL) clubs.

It has no power to dictate how these clubs are run, for example limit their jackpot operations, or to audit them.

"What we can do is probably to make affiliations requirement a little bit more transparent. We could perhaps request for the submission of some documents and reports. You need to spend X% on football, otherwise you really shouldn't be an affiliate member of the FAS. We could do something like that, but we really can't change gaming laws."

5. The election outcome will have impact beyond the football community.

The election will be held at the Singapore Sports Hub on Saturday.

A total of 32 candidates will contest the election, including 14 others contesting on an individual basis for the six council member positions.

Teams contesting in a slate will need a minimum of two-thirds (30) of the 44 votes to win. Independent candidates need a simple majority to win.

"The whole of Singapore is watching. Some would argue even beyond Singapore. So the election now has gone beyond what really happens on the pitch. And everyone, volunteers, supporters and sponsors are watching the elections because it matters to them."

This was Tan's comments when he was asked about how he felt about the upcoming election.

He may well be right, though with the ongoing investigations, the election result may just turn out to be one of the many twists and turns as Singapore football tries to get back on its feet after years in the doldrums.

Related articles:

Former FAS president Zainudin finally free to comment, denies having any business ties with Bill Ng

Football Donation Saga: Former FAS president Zainudin’s silence is deafening

Football Drama: More questions for the FAS before the upcoming election.

Football leadership elections: Power, “donations” and much intrigue revealed in the campaign

Top photo from Chan Cheow Pong

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