Immovable. Untouchable. Oddly impressive, even.

Sepp Blatter was elected to his fifth term as president of FIFA on Friday. It came just days after 14 former or current executives and associates were indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in sweeping charges of racketeering stemming from an alleged widespread culture of bribery and kickbacks.

In the end though, it hardly mattered. After blocking Blatter from getting a two-thirds majority on the first vote, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan – needing to switch some 31 votes his way – withdrew from the race before the conclussion of the second majority vote. And with that, Blatter is back for four more years.

View photos Sepp Blatter delivers his speech ahead of the vote to decide on the FIFA presidency. (AFP) More

If the images of FIFA execs getting hauled out of swanky Zurich hotels weren't going to do it, almost nothing short of Blatter himself getting legally rolled up on will.

This was a testament to the power the 79-year-old Blatter has amassed over four decades with FIFA, including the last 17 as president, mainly in gaining unshakable support in many small, often poor nations.

It was also something straight out of America's big-city mayoral party machines – New York's Tammany Hall and James Michael Curley's Boston stretching through Richard J. Daley's Chicago and even Marion Barry's Washington. Everything was based on caring for ward bosses, so when it mattered they'd deliver the votes.

If you grease the skids and take care of the corners then no amount of cries of scandal from the wealthy elite, howls from the media and complaints – or even convictions – of illegal behavior can unseat you. It can actually strengthen everyone's resolve.

FIFA has 209 federations and each has an equal vote, a system in which Comoros counts as much as China.

Throughout his tenure the Swiss-born Blatter has curried favor with many of the poorer nations (more than half the population of Comoros, for instance, live on less than $1.25 per day). Some of it has been above the board and well-intended, say using FIFA's vast resources to fund much-needed grassroots efforts. Even if it was just hundreds of thousands of dollars, it represented a fortune in some places, not to mention a clear show of respect.

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Whether all of the money made it to its intended target didn't matter. It would be the guy voting who would be able to skim – "honest graft" in the parlance of Tammany.

If, as critics would claim, Blatter was revered (or feared) because he looked the other way as nefarious business was conducted, or knew where bodies were buried, then, in the end, that worked too. Or, perhaps, it was just fear the next administration wouldn't be so generous.

Whatever it was, his base came through, thwarting an uprising attempt by many of the world's biggest nations, including the United States and most of Europe.

Blatter rode near-unanimous support from Africa, Asia and many Central American and island nations to hold off a challenge by Prince Ali, the 39-year-old who ran on a campaign of transparency because, he aptly noted, this is a soccer federation and "there is no reason not to be transparent."

Transparency is a fine concept, but for many national federations that isn't the same as years of money coming in, one way or the other.

"The basic principle of FIFA is those that have more will share with those who have less," Blatter said earlier in the day. He was discussing a dispute between the Palestinian and Israeli Football Associations, which ended in a handshake, but it was also the clever insertion of a red meat political line.

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