Dr. Wu re-elected as AIBA President

The 106 member countries represented at the 2010 Congress of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) today voted by acclamation for Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu from Chinese Taipei to serve a second four-year term as the President of the Association.

The result returns Wu, a member of the International Olympic Committee and AIBA member for 25 years, for a further four years as the head of the association which he has headed since 2006, when he put an end to the tenure of former president Anwar Choudry from Pakistan on a reform ticket.

As the only candidate for the election, Wu was voted in by acclamation as the delegates gave him a standing ovation. Furthermore, four Confederation Presidents were also re-elected as Vice-Presidents of the Association: Dr Abdullah Bessalem for the African Boxing Confederation; Domingo Solano for the American Boxing Confederation; Dr Humbert Furgoni for the European Boxing Confederation and Keith Walker for the Oceania Boxing Confederation.

“I want to thank all the delegates for your confidence and trust placed in me,” Wu said after the election. “I clearly remember four years ago in Santo Domingo when I was elected President I delivered my election speech. The first thing I said is that the President of AIBA is a servant of boxing for AIBA and for our national federations. I now repeat this. With your confidence and trust I will continue to give my
commitment to you. In the past four years I have travelled over 300 days a year. Maybe over the next four years this will be over 350 days a year.”

“We have a lot of work. Although we have achieved many things, you have all demonstrated that you want the new AIBA; you want continuous reform; you want a very clean, honest and transparent organization. I give this commitment to you: I will do everything I can to make sure we are a clean organization. We have a lot of prospects, a lot of vision and a lot of new work ahead of us. I need you to really unite with me. No organization can survive and have strength if it is internally divided. So with this plea from me, let’s work hand in hand for the next four years.”

Wu presides over the world’s third biggest international sports federation after the Congress delegates ratified three new provisional members today, bringing the organization’s total number of member federations to 195. The new members are Guinea Bissau, Tanzania and Kiribati, one of the world’s smallest countries by surface area.