After Petra Sörling - chairperson of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) since 2021 - was re-elected for four new years on Tuesday evening, chaos broke out in the congress hall in Doha, Qatar.
Supporters of the opposing candidate Khalil al-Mohannadi, Qatar, protested fiercely and believed that the election should be redone.
It was such an aggressive atmosphere and I didn't feel safe, said Sörling to Dagens Nyheter later in the evening.
"Very threatening”
This led to the Swedish embassy in the country being contacted.
The embassy has helped us very, very well, so we could get out of there. We took the flight that was planned from the beginning, but we didn't dare stay in the hall, says Dennis Lindahl, chairperson of the Swedish Table Tennis Association, to TT shortly after landing on Swedish soil on Wednesday morning.
The atmosphere was very threatening, but we weren't threatened. But we've heard now that there are people who have been threatened on site. Both the day before and on election day, continues Lindahl.
This year's chairperson election has been surrounded by rumors of bribery. According to The New York Times, whistleblowers have made reports and the federation confirms to the newspaper that an investigation was conducted prior to the chairperson election.
Our "integrity" unit is independent and I don't know if they have one or ten cases right now. What I can say is that it's been whispered a lot about it in the corridors, says Petra Sörling to DN.
Sörling won the vote with the numbers 104-102, but the losing side claims that five online votes were added. The Swede got 17 online votes - for al-Mohannadi the number was 4.
"People scared”
There were a total of 208 delegations registered and throughout the day the number of those who voted in different questions differed. It depends on how active the eligible voters are, says Dennis Lindahl.
Since ITTF later in the evening declared Sörling the winner, the losing side can now only appeal the result to CAS, the sports arbitration court.
The democratic order would have been to say that you don't accept the vote and that you will appeal to CAS. And that you then went on with the other elections at the meeting. Here, you take over the meeting and make people scared, says Dennis Lindahl.
Petra Sörling re-elected as chairperson of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) for four new years at the annual meeting in Doha, Qatar.
After the election result became public, supporters of the opposing candidate Khalil al-Mohannadi strongly protested. The result's validity was questioned.
Due to the protests, the meeting could not be completed, but later Sörling was declared the winner on the federation's website. The federation announced that the annual meeting must be reconvened to elect eight people as vice chairpersons of the ITTF board.
The opposing candidate al-Mohannadi has been part of the ITTF board for nearly three decades, but he was forced to leave his position as vice chairperson during the period 2006-2009.
This after an election of him was declared invalid due to bribery. The sports arbitration court (CAS) then ruled that there was "convincing evidence that bribery had occurred" in connection with that election, reports the news agency AP.
Petra Sörling was elected ITTF chairperson for the first time in 2021 and became the first woman on the post. In 2023, the Swede was also elected as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
