15 Jul 2011 at 22:54 | Published by: JJM | Views: 10967 | News search

As several WMF Executive Committee members have decided to quit from their positions, and the elections for WMF Executive Committee are coming up just one month from now, WMF still does not have so many election candidates as there are positions in the WMF Executive Committee.

Only four candidates have been nominated to the Executive Committee elections so far:

• Gerhard Zimmermann (Germany), for the position of WMF President
  
• Pasi Aho (Finland), for the position of WMF Sports Officer
  
• Yevgeni Kaplun (Russia), for the position of WMF Media Manager
  
• Hans Bergström (Sweden), freely for any position in WMF Executive Committee

The current WMF Secretary General, Roger Cadosch of Switzerland, who leaves his position in August 2011, writes in his greetings to the WMF Delegates Conference about his concerns that WMF politics is becoming too heavily controlled by a small inner circle of company owners closely related to the 3D company. Cadosch mentions two aspects how the personal commercial interests of WMF leaders such as Zimmermann and Aho might negatively affect the future of WMF:

• WMF officials closely related to 3D company have volunteered to handle the technical inspection process of WMF-licensed playing equipment, such as minigolf balls and materials for building minigolf courses. Here Cadosch sees a concern that other minigolf companies can be discouraged from cooperating with WMF in future, because applying for WMF licensing of their equipment would mean sending their technological secrets to these WMF leaders — directly to the hands of their business competitor, 3D company.
• Roger Cadosch also believes that many minigolf course manufacturers have valuable contacts in new countries outside of the current WMF world, as customers from new countries have ordered a minigolf course for themselves. But minigolf companies keep these contact persons from new countries as a secret, out of fear that introducing these contact persons to WMF leaders (and thus to the inner circle of 3D company) would help their business competitor 3D to grow to these new market areas.

Roger Cadosch also comments that in his opinion, the current system of requiring a WMF inspection of every minigolf competition course is a problem for the growth of the sport to new countries and new areas. Cadosch recommends abolishing the course inspection system, to remove unnecessary obstacles from the growth of the sport to new areas.

» more info: documents for WMF Delegates Conference 2011 in Stockholm

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