Swede Sorin was re-elected as president of the ITTF, but there was a big uproar at the annual congress

On May 27, local time, the chairman election was held at the ITTF annual congress held in Doha, Qatar, and after a 70-minute voting process, the incumbent Petra Sorin (Sweden) defeated Mohannadi, the first vice president of the ITTF from Qatar, by a narrow margin of 104 votes to 102 votes, and was successfully re-elected.

Swede Sorin was successfully re-elected as president of the ITTF

However, some of the participating members who were not satisfied with the result and the voting method strongly objected. The reason was that 16 people were allowed to attend online at the time of the confirmation of the attendance of the representatives of member associations at the start of the congress (about 10 hours earlier), but in the actual vote, 21 member associations participated in the vote (the vote was 17 to 4 in favor of Sorin). They demanded clarification as to which representatives of member associations joined later and strongly advocated that representatives of member associations who joined after confirmation did not have voting rights. Sixteen member associations were present online when attendance was confirmed, followed by two more member associations in the early voting on proposals and three more before the election of the chairman.

After an hour-long protest, ITTF Vice President Simmons explained in a calm tone that the 208 member associations had registered to attend, and that the purpose of confirming attendance was to confirm a quorum, and that member associations that were late to the venue or online had the right to vote. He concluded by adding: "The opposition application procedure has been prepared and cannot be carried out again. However, despite this, the roar of protest did not subside, and Simmons announced the suspension of the annual congress and the ITTF executive board to convene an emergency meeting of the executive board to decide on future responses.

The election of the ITTF Executive Committee has also been postponed for some reason. The ITTF will convene the ITTF Congress again no later than November 2025 to elect a new ITTF Executive Committee, and Liu Guoliang, the former chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association, will participate in the election.