The winners of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce (JCCI) elections are expected to be announced Tuesday evening, a source at the Chamber has said. The elections, which opened Sunday, have followed a new Ministry of Commerce and Industry format in which votes are given to only one listed candidate irrespective of whether the candidate is an industrialist or a trader. The ministry hopes the new system will curb the forming of alliances believed in the past to have been used to “influence the Board of Directors”, according to the source, and will also inject “new blood” in the form of a younger generation of businessmen. Other moves from the ministry this year include the banning of publicity campaigns in the press, with candidates instead taking to internet facilities such as Facebook and Twitter, and using SMS text messages to mobile telephones to conduct campaigning. Voting in the elections saw a large turnout during the first few days of polling, according to Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, the executive manager of the Media and Public Relations department at the JCCI, with the process running in an “organized and streamlined” fashion. “The Chamber has provided all the facilities for both voters and candidates to conduct the process as efficiently as possible, and officials have been standing close by along with election committee staff and Chamber authorities ensuring that everything has gone with the utmost transparency and integrity,” Al
