By Miles Hadfield
The results of the election for the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) board members at large have been revised, securing another term for the UK’s Ben Reid, representing Midcounties Co-operative.
Mr Reid had failed to secure a place on the initial count, but has now comes 14th out of the 15 winners, with 384 votes.
The recount means that Simona Cavazzutti, Confederación de Cooperativas Rurales del Paraguay (CONCOPAR), Paraguay, who had secured a place, is no longer successful in the election.
Bruno Roelants, director general of the ICA, said in a message to members that “a number of issues” came up during the vote, the failure of the electronic voting system forcing a switch to a manual vote. He added that this system had been used four times before without hitch and thanked the the ICA Elections Committee for “their very difficult task”.
There was also disruption to language interpretation, he added.
A tight schedule and delays meant that the board election vote was launched before the election for president was announced – which complicated the issue because one candidate, Jean-Louis Bancel from France, was standing for both. This meant that voters by proxy could vote for a 16th candidate with an identifiable sign, to be taken into consideration in case Mr Bancel was elected president.
This led to a dispute over the validity of 64 ballots containing votes for 16 candidates, from members who understood that this was the correct procedure in case Mr Bancel won the presidential election. The Elections Committee first declared these 64 ballots invalid and the results were communicated accordingly, but this has been revised on legal advice.
“What has happened has affected us all and is regretful,” said Mr Roelants. “We are very sorry about it. It has been due, as you can see above, to a combination of different circumstances, none of which has anything to do with our Spanish hosts.”
-CoopNews
