The names have changed but the game remains the same. Despite the arrests, the indictments, the $200m in kickbacks and bribes, the suspensions and the bans this Fifa election is still being played by the old rules.

As the executive board of the Confederation of African Football met in Rwanda three weeks ago to anoint Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, the Bahraini Asian Football Confederation president, as its chosen one for the Fifa presidency, it could have been a scene from 18 years ago when Sepp Blatter was seeking to win his first term.

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Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, the Jordanian candidate whose votes are likely to decide this election between Sheikh Salman and his Uefa challenger, Gianni Infantino, in the later rounds of Friday’s secret ballot of 207 members, has been telling anyone that will listen that the campaign has been conducted according to the rules of “old Fifa”. He is right – it has been characterised by the usual backroom deals, vote trading and bold promises of increased development cash. What Prince Ali cannot say, because of the nonsensical rules forbidding candidates from talking about one another, is that if the favourite, Sheikh Salman, triumphs it is likely to accelerate the endgame for Fifa. At a time when it is desperately painting long overdue reforms as a blank slate, its members look increasingly likely to reach for a comfort blanket.

Nothing Sheikh Salman has done during the campaign – from ducking public debate and scrutiny to meeting legitimate questions about his past with a flurry of aggressive legal letters from London law firm Schillings – has done anything to answer concerns about a royal from a feudal monarchy not being the obvious choice to lead the kind of change required.

Sheikh Salman’s campaign has been almost entirely aimed at the 207 voters who will step up at Zurich’s Hallenstadion conference hall to cast their vote. He has warned the US and Swiss authorities who have pursued their shock and awe assault on Fifa’s culture of patronage and graft since last May against any more “PR stunts”. He has faithfully followed the script of the now banned Blatter in insisting the criminal investigations were a confederation problem and not a Fifa one.

Sheikh Salman has frequently shown signs of being a most reluctant leader of world football. He is not even that enthusiastic about watching the game, if a recent Sky News interview is anything to go by. Explaining he missed the last World Cup final because it was Ramadan, he was asked if he would go to the next one: “If I’m Fifa president I suppose I’ll have to,” he conceded.

The 50-year-old, who has spent most of his gilded life in football administration and became president of the Bahrain Football Association in 2002, did not expect to stand. The Asian Football Confederation was fully expecting to back Michel Platini’s march on Fifa House after a deal was brokered between the Frenchman and the AFC. After Platini was banned, the AFC switched to plan B and Sheikh Salman, its president since 2013 when Blatter helped lever him into power, was persuaded.

The most worrying aspect of Sheikh Salman’s candidacy concerns actions in his recent past. Human rights organisations have raised endless questions about his alleged involvement in identifying footballers and other athletes involved in Bahrain’s 2011 uprising. Despite his denials, those questions have returned louder still since the Guardian revealed his Fifa plans in October.

The Associated Press reported in 2011 that 150 athletes had been arrested during the uprising, including three footballers, and some were later tortured. Many remain in prison. Those who protested were denigrated on state-run television by Prince Nasser, another member of the ruling family, who called for a wall to fall on their heads.

Those close to Sheikh Salman point out that he should not be damned for the views of those who share his surname. But he has never condemned the imprisonment and torture of those involved in the protests and, at the very least, has been accused of failing to protect his players. As Prince Ali put it recently: “The simple, basic fact of the matter is that person did not protect or stick up for his players at that time.”

Sheikh Salman has admitted chairing the committee that was charged with identifying those involved but has said it was never formally constituted and never conducted any official business. He has also alleged “dirty tricks” and insisted “one million percent” that he was not involved in identifying footballers, while his lawyers have blamed a campaign of misinformation against him.

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He claimed to CNN on Wednesday that he had been used as a “political tool”, saying: “I’ve got nothing to hide. Everything has to be clear but we have to check as well the sources, we cannot accept somebody coming to you and accusing you of things that you haven’t done and they’re just repeating it again and again.” However, as James Dorsey, whose Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog has been a persistent thorn in the side of the AFC during Salman’s tenure, pointed out in a recent lecture the BFA also threatened penalties and suspensions for those who “violated the law” including athletes, administrators and coaches who participated in “illegal demonstrations” or any other act that aims to “overthrow the regime or insult national figures”.

Asked why six clubs were sanctioned for not fulfilling their fixtures during the period of emergency, despite citing security concerns, a spokesman for Sheikh Salman has said the decision was taken by an independent disciplinary committee.

Three of the players involved have since been put before the media in Bahrain to claim that Sheikh Salman had nothing to do with their imprisonment. But Hakeem al-Oraibi, a former Bahrain international now in exile in Australia who claims he was tortured and beaten in the wake of the protests, has a different view.

“Sheikh Salman was responsible for the football players, for the national team – how can it be that he didn’t know anything about it? There is no possibility that he could not have known anything about what happened in Bahrain,” he told WDR Sport Inside this week.

Then there are the corruption allegations now aired in the House of Commons by the MP and Fifa reform campaigner Damian Collins. He told the House of Commons that in 2009 al-Bilad, a Bahraini sports newspaper, alleged that Sheikh Salman used Fifa development funds to fill a funding gap having spent £1.6m on a bitterly contested campaign he lost by two votes to the later disgraced Qatari Mohamed bin Hammam.

When the Guardian previously approached Sheikh Salman’s team, who have consistently turned down requests to interview him during his three-month campaign, over the al-Bilad allegations, his London law firm Schillings said his 2009 campaign was funded from his own pocket and the claims were entirely false.

There are further allegations, repeatedly aired since 2009, that the Olympic Council of Asia (headed by the Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmed al-Sabah) was buying votes on behalf of Sheikh Salman. Les Murray, an Australian broadcaster who was then also a member of the Fifa ethics committee, called on the governing body to investigate. Murray outlined the claims to the then secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, in April 2009, in a letter seen by the Guardian.

“To this day I do not know what happened to my report to Valcke and to the ethics probe Petrus Damaseb [the then acting chair of the ethics committee] ordered to commence, for I have not heard back from Fifa since,” said Murray this week. “But even today, almost seven years later, questions to Fifa about this matter and what happened to it are justified and should be asked, especially now that Sheikh Salman, the beneficiary of the alleged scam, is running for Fifa’s highest office.”

There was no suggestion that Sheikh Salman knew of the alleged vote buying and his team have pointed out that his rival for the Fifa executive committee seat, Bin Hammam, who made the original allegations, has since been banned for life.

Fifa’s own integrity checks cleared Sheikh Salman to run – though it is questionable whether they involved more than a review of publicly available materials. Ultimately, it is hard not to look at this long list of allegations and – in the case of the claims linked to the 2011 uprising – official reports on the official Bahrain state news agency, and wonder whether this is really the man to lead Fifa into a brave new world and implement the reforms that will also be voted on this Friday.

There are broader geopolitical questions here, of course, about the US naval base in Bahrain and about Britain’s role in making its former protectorate what it is today. But, as the FA’s chairman, Greg Dyke, articulated bluntly if somewhat clumsily, there is also a broad issue with making a member of Bahrain’s ruling family the head of Fifa at this juncture in its history.

Or, as Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, concludes: “What Fifa needs is accountability, an end to corruption, and the proper implementations of human rights due diligence procedures. By refusing to adequately investigate these allegations and allowing Sheikh Salman to potentially lead world football, Fifa is putting a noose around its neck.”