Failing to meet quorum, Journalists Syndicate elections postponed for 2 weeks

Midterm elections at the Journalists Syndicate, set to take place on Friday, were postponed for two weeks because the necessary quorum was not met.

According to the syndicate’s bylaws, a quorum of 50 percent + 1 of all dues-paying general assembly members is required for the elections to go ahead. This means 4,300 general assembly members, yet barely more than 1,100 members signed in to cast their ballots on Friday.

The quorum is not easy to met, and general assembly meetings and elections are often postponed due to the inability to reach it.

On the newly scheduled date of elections, March 17, the quorum for the elections to go ahead will be just 25 percent.

The last midterm elections for the Journalists’ Syndicate were held in March 2015. The elections are for the post of the syndicate president and for six seats on the syndicates’ governing council.

Seven candidates are vying for the post of syndicate president, including incumbent president Yehia Qallash and pro-government candidate Abdel Mohsen Salama, an editor from state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

The campaigns and competition between these two front runners reflects a deep division in the elections, particularly the state’s animosity toward Qallash’s camp.

Qallash, along with two other syndicate council members, Khaled al-Balshy and Gamal Abdel Rehim, were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in November 2016, on charges of harboring fugitives and disseminating false news. This sentence, handed down after two journalists were arrested during an unprecedented police raid on the syndicate headquarters on May 1, is being appealed, but the appeal was postponed last week until March 25.

The remaining five candidates who have nominated themselves for syndicate president include three other men, Islam Kamal, Sayyed al-Iskandarani and Talaat Hisham, and two women, Jihan al-Shaarawi and Noura Rashed. These are the first journalists’ elections in which women have nominated themselves for the post.

The six seats on the syndicate’s governing council, these are being contested by 70 candidates, including 12 women candidates. In its 76-year history, only nine women have won election to seats on the Journalists’ Syndicate council. The first woman representative on the syndicate council, Amina al-Saeed, was elected in 1954.