SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 29 March 2024, Friday |

Outcome of Order of Engineers elections: “Future Movement”, the biggest loser

Before the engineers, lawyers united behind the upraising, exactly a month after the outbreak of October 17, 2019 revolution. Attorney Melhem Khalaf won, and the moment his victory was announced, chants rose in the hall, “Revolution, revolution.”

Between the two victories in both unions, the “Secular Club” won the elections in Saint Joseph University (USJ), and the “Student” list supported by the club won the majority of seats in 18 faculties out of 19.

The revolution has presented three faces within three years,  through the ballot boxes:

Student Charbel Chaaya, the Head of the secular club at USJ.

Engineer Aref Yassin in the Order of Engineers and Architects in Beirut.

Lawyer Melhem Khalaf in Beirut Bar Association.

The common denominator in this triangular victory is that the opponents in the three elections were the political parties and movements. The emblem “all of them means all of them” brought them together to face the revolution:

The first entitlement was in the Bar Association, so all parties fell before the lawyers’ uprising.

The second entitlement came, a year later, in the student elections, and the parties fell before the student uprising.

Today, the political parties fall in front of the engineers’ uprising.

In revolutions and people’s movement, lawyers, engineers and university students are considered the vanguard of change. The importance of this change is that it takes place in the ballot boxes and not in the “ammunition and missile boxes”. The importance of this change is that it came unspoiled by bribery and violence. There wasn’t any single bribery or pressure recorded, neither on a lawyer, nor on a student, nor an engineer.

A veteran engineer in the Order of Engineers told Sawt Beirut International (SBI) that the biggest blow in the last elections was for the Future Movement, why? The veteran engineer said: “The order meant a lot to the Future Movement. The latter was striving and battling to win the elections and bring an engineer from the movement or its allies.”

It is worth noting that Engineer Samir Doumit who was the deputy head of the Future Movement, was elected for two states . Engineer Khaled Shehab was also elected, and the sponsor of his electoral campaign was engineer Doumit. Engineer Bilal Al-Alayli, who was also elected the Head of the Order previously, was also supported by the Future Movement.

Three engineers, supported by the Future Movement, have been elected previously as the Head of the Order, however, today the party’s candidate did not gain more than quarter the votes obtained by the winning engineer:

The Future Movement candidate received 1,528 votes, while the winning candidate received 6,798 votes.

Are the Order’s ballot boxes an indicator of the parliamentary elections next spring? Numbers in this regard are not only a point of view.

    Source:
  • Sawt Beirut International