Khartoum, August 28(Darfur240 The newly elected head of the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate, Abdel Moneim Abu Idris, told Darfur 24 that the elected members will be invited to the Syndicate Council to convene and begin its work; Immediately after the end of the appeals period.
Journalists aligned with Bashir had attempted to prevent Sunday’s vote going ahead by raising an ongoing legal complaint, saying the syndicate could not replace the pre-existing Bashir-era union.
However, election committee head Faisal Mohamed Salih, who served as information minister in a civilian-led government between the uprising and the coup, said the vote “was executed in a completely democratic way… smoothly and with a high turnout and excitement among the journalists”.
Civil society observers, including some from opposition lawyers’ groups, attended the election.
Abdelmoniem Abu Idrees, a journalist working for international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), was voted head of the syndicate. Votes were being counted for the rest of the union’s 40-person leadership.
The Sudanese Journalists Network candidate, Ayman Sheikh El-Din, received 158 votes, while the independent candidate, Dora Qambo, received 86 votes.