CAIRO: The Journalists' Syndicate elections are set to take place on Dec. 3, the committee overseeing the elections said. The announcement comes on the heels of an administrative court ruling earlier this month which invalidated the results of the 2007 Journalists' Syndicate's elections. Following the 2007 elections in which current head Makram Mohamed Ahmed won, Fayez Zayed, chief editor of Akhbar El-Parlaman (Parliament News) magazine, and Khalil Fathi, deputy editor of Al-Watan Al-Arabi newspaper, had raised the case, saying they were disqualified from participating in the elections by the committee overseeing the election process. The court ruling supported the two editors' claim that the committee's decision was unjustified. Zayed said that the committee did not allow him to participate in the elections due to personal problems. On the other hand, Gamal Fahmy, current head of the syndicate's foreign affairs committee, said that both candidates were disqualified in 2007 because they failed to meet all the candidacy criteria. The committee will start accepting candidacy applications for the chairman elections from Nov. 7 until noon on Nov. 11. The candidates' names will be announced on Thursday Nov. 12 and the door will be open for petitions and requests for changes from Nov. 15 until Nov. 17. The final list of candidates will be announced on Nov. 25. If less than 50 percent of the syndicate's general assembly shows up on election day, a re-run will take place on Dec. 10. According to the professional syndicates law, 50 percent plus one of the general assembly must attend for the elections to take place. Even though current chairman, Ahmed, previously told Daily News Egypt that the syndicate's lawyer Farid Abu Zeid is likely to appeal the court's decision, nothing has been filed. With the Journalists' Syndicate elections scheduled to take place next month, it is still unclear who will run in the race pending a court decision on whether the 2007 elections will be repeated.
