Dissidents Win 2 Tech Guild Chapter Seats

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Opposition candidates won two of three Civil Service Technical Guild chapter elections last week, but challenges to the results could be on the way.

HARRY DONAS: Wins chapter.

First-time candidate Harry Donas won a three-way race for president of Chapter 8, one of the local's largest, after a three-month delay that caused acrimony with the chapter. The Guild is Local 375 of District Council 37.

A Repeat Unseating

Challenger Giuseppe D'Ancona once again defeated incumbent Chapter 3 President Kursheed Siddiqui, who had contested the first election results.

Incumbent Chapter 37 President Ahmed Shakir defeated challenger Richard Gwasda in a walk-in re-run election after a previous mail ballot was invalidated when half the envelopes arrived already opened.

Mr. Donas, who received 86 votes to Ian Anderson's 61 and Eric Ruano-Melendez's 12, said he was pleased to finally have the results and looked forward to taking over the chapter, which consists of Department of Environmental Protection employees.

AHMED SHAKIR: Survives a challenge.

But on the day of the balloting, Mr. Donas said, the chapter's former president, Steve Awad - who had been supporting Mr. Anderson - showed up when the ballots were being counted. According to Mr. Donas, Mr. Award, who is now running for president of Chapter 32, wished him good luck and then said, "You're not going to challenge the results if you don't win, are you?"

Mr. Donas replied that he probably would not, but that he had every right to, and pointed out that Mr. Awad was challenging his own election results. The conversation then became so disruptive, with Mr. Awad calling Mr. Donas a liar, that the ballot-counters asked Mr. Awad to leave, according to Mr. Donas.

Mr. Awad did not return e-mail messages requesting comment.

Closer But Same Result

Mr. D'Ancona won the Chapter 3 election to represent Health and Hospitals Corporation members by a vote of 42 to 37, having previously defeated Mr. Siddiqui 30 to 14. The incumbent is challenging the results, claiming that eight of 10 ballots were incorrectly set aside because the members were wrongly determined not to be in good standing. "The election committee will decide this week," said Mr. Siddiqui.

Local 375 Secretary Ahmed Shakir won his race for president of Chapter 37, representing Department of Transportation members, against three challengers with about 57 percent of the vote.

The walk-in election resulted in a higher total vote count of 148, compared with 128 from the mail ballot. About 80 percent of the chapter's members work in or next to the building in which the balloting was held.

Challenger Richard Gwasda, who got 26 percent of the vote, had objected to the walk-in vote, conducted between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., claiming that it would be difficult for some members to travel to the site during work hours. Mr. Gwasda did not return calls requesting comment on the results.

Mr. Shakir said that the higher number of returns showed that the walk-in process was democratic. "If I did it again with the mail-ballot and the same thing happened, how many times are we going to re-run the election?" he asked, referring to the 77 slit-open ballots from the previous election. "We don't have enough money left to run the election over and over again, so this made sense to us."