UJ official says student union elections conducted with minor violations

AMMAN — This year’s student union elections at the University of Jordan (UJ) went “peacefully and more successfully” compared to last year, with very minor violations, according to a UJ official.

At a press conference to announce the election results on Thursday evening, UJ Vice President Azmi Mahaftha, who heads the elections higher committee, said 437 candidates competed at the department level for 74 independent seats, after “students won 21 seats by default.”

“Around 57 per cent of UJ students voted for individual candidates, while some 45 per cent voted for the proportional lists at the university level,” he said.

Out of 41,122 eligible voters, 23,302 voted in Thursday’s polls (around 56 per cent), according to official UJ figures.

“The highest vote rate was at the faculty of rehabilitation sciences, with 89.19 per cent, while the lowest was at the King Abdullah II Faculty of Information Technology with 43.78 per cent,” Mahaftha noted, adding that voter turnout at the university’s Aqaba branch reached 71.5 per cent.

“Each of the departments that offer undergraduate programmes has one seat at minimum, in addition to a second seat per 300 students,” he said, adding that each one-department-faculty is represented in three seats. 

“According to the recent amendments of the rules governing union elections, proportional lists that receive 4 per cent or less of the votes are automatically discounted,” the UJ official added.

Mahaftha noted that 23 non-Jordanian students ran for union seats.

Regarding the proportional lists, eight of them competed for the nine allocated seats: the Islamist “Ahl Al Himmeh” won four seats, followed by “Al Nashama” with three and “Awdah” with two.

Al Nashama and Awdah are in talks to form a nationalist bloc titled “National Unity”, a source from the group told The Jordan Times.

UJ President Ekhleif Tarawneh said the university intensified its security, and administrative and legal preparations to deal with any issues that could arise during the elections. 

“We want to grant our students complete freedom to choose their representatives,” Tarawneh told The Jordan Times ahead of the polls.

Despite the university’s security measures, fights erupted among students at the arts, educational sciences and business faculties, according to eyewitnesses. There were no details on injuries or damages.