AMMAN — The
Unified Association List/Alliance of the White List and Independents has
withdrawn from
Jordan Engineers Association (JEA) elections because of “outside
interference,” the list announced at a Tuesday press conference, Jo24 reported.
اضافة اعلان
Hassan Hawamdeh,
head of the Unified Association List, read out on a statement behalf of the
list members. He declared that the decision to withdraw was a protest against
“unprecedented” scenes of “external interference” in the elections, led and
directed by an “official body.”
"Several months
ago, we noticed official interest in our elections, as information was
requested about candidates and the formation of lists, and there were pressures
on a large number of activists not to join our list,” Hawamdeh said.
"Government
bodies moved to pay past dues for a large number of engineers [so they can
vote] as part of a campaign to direct engineers to elect a specific list,” he
added, claiming that the total amount paid was more than JD2.5 million.
Hawamdeh pointed to
worse scenes on election day, where “external interference was accompanied by
mismanagement and bad organization, and some parties, tribal groupings and
municipal mechanisms sided with a specific list."
He referred to
scenes where engineers who voted for a specific list took photos of their
ballots and membership cards, and sent them to an unnamed party.
A former member of
the association’s council, Sari Zuaiter, said that that the White List was not
afraid of losing, and it accepted the loss of the majority of the council seats
in the 2018 elections, working seriously with the rest of council members for
three years afterwards.
He stated that the
unified list is a democratic body that wants the association to be strong, to
serve the Jordanian engineer, and to defend his right to select the best
representatives.
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