General secretary elected by mistake: World Weightlifting repents

Wrong procedures

The procedures were completely wrong; it will be voted on again.

There is still no word ‘end’ to the most anticipated and ‘hottest’ elections in the history of World Weightlifting. In fact, over the weekend, the Congress, meeting in Tirana, Albania, voted for all the IWF presidential positions, only to retract a few hours later due to obvious errors in the management of the vote itself. Jose Quinones, who was mistakenly declared the winner of the election for secretary general, received 68 votes against Urso’s 60 and 16 for the third candidate, Ali Moradi.

To win outright, Quinones would have needed 73 votes, or 50 percent plus one. Since he was still five votes short, a second round should have been held between Quinones and Urso, which did not happen. Thus reopened the games for the office of Secretary General (voting will take place on June 30), which should also happen for that of President, whose election had already been marked by a dispute with strong scenes of anger and nervousness.

“We have witnessed an unfortunate situation,” says Antonio Urso: “Now I hope that the voting will take place with due formal correctness and transparency. However, having had the trust of 60 countries, in such a climate, gives us a lot of strength, it is a very strong political signal. So is having received phone calls and encouraging comments from all over the world when this equivocal situation in the polls came up. We need a cultural change, and this situation has manifested that. It’s time to see this sport from another point of view.”