The ITTF presidential election has become a farce, and domestic netizens ridicule the ITTF as a "grass stage team"

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) held its annual general meeting in Doha on the 27th local time, at which a number of elections were made, including the all-important election of the president. In the end, Petra Sorin was re-elected, but when the results were announced, more votes were displayed than originally announced, which angered the Qatari delegates, who were defeated by only two votes, and the scene was chaotic.

Petra Sorin was re-elected as President of the ITTF

The ITTF will hold its annual general meeting after the World Championships, and in addition to the three World Championships from 2027 to 29, which will be held in Astana, Kazakhstan, Fukuoka, Japan and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to elect a new president. The contenders include former president Petra Sorin of Sweden, as well as Qatar's representative Mohannadi, senior executive vice-president of the ITTF.

Before voting, the President of the General Assembly took the usual roll call and announced that 185 participants had voted in person and 16 people voted online, or a total of 201 people voted. Since voting is still done by hand, it takes two hours to count the votes.

The results of the vote showed that a total of 21 people voted online, 16 more than originally announced

When the results were announced, Petra Sorin received 104 votes and Mohannadi received 102 votes, meaning that Petra Sorin won by a narrow margin of 2 votes and was re-elected. However, the total number of voters was five more than the 201 at the time of the roll call, and all five of them came from "online voting", and the final number of online voters increased from 16 to 21, with Petra Sorin receiving 17 online votes and Mohannadi receiving 4 votes.

As a result, many of the participants, including Mohannadi, questioned why there were five more online votes, and the chairman of the conference said that these five people were late, and the participants questioned whether the voters who joined after the roll call still had the right to vote according to the statutes of the conference. Pointing out that the chairman should have announced the number of voters again at that time, "Where's the transparency?" We will seek legal action."

Several participants questioned the results of the vote

As can be seen in the live broadcast clip, the atmosphere is becoming increasingly tense, as there are requests to list the login times of the 21 online voters and their countries/territories and compare them with the roll call, as well as to explain the constitution of the General Assembly, "If someone shows up after the roll call, why are they still eligible to vote?" The audience responded with warm applause.

After much debate at the event, the ITTF announced that the conference would be suspended and that an emergency meeting would be held later to discuss what to do, and the live video of the conference was later set to be closed on YouTube. Earlier, during the 2025 World Table Tennis Championships in Doha, Wang Chuqin, the national table tennis representative who finally won the men's singles gold medal, once encountered the incident of cracking the sponge after the racket was sent for testing.