KAIST International Students Association (KISA) officially announced a deferral of its presidential elections on December 3. The period of the application for candidacy has been extended to December 12 inclusive, and the approved candidates will proceed with their campaigns from December 14 to 20. KISA will hold the presidential debates online using Zoom on December 21. 

Upon the end of the debates, students will have 48 hours to cast their vote through KISA’s website. Votes will be weighted to ensure an equal split between the KISA members’ votes and the votes of the rest of the international community. 

In the original schedule, the application for candidacy was open between November 24 and 28. Following the application review, the campaign period was scheduled from November 30 to December 3, and the presidential debates would have occurred on December 4, preceding the final vote. The election was originally meant to take place at the end of the previous semester, but was cancelled due to the turmoil caused by COVID-19.

To be eligible for the presidential running, a student must be a KISA Cabinet member who has served the Cabinet for at least a semester and is able to fulfill their responsibilities as president for a full term of one year. At the time of writing, the only candidate is Ashhad Kamal Taseer, a Pakistani MS student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Taseer has been a KISA member since he joined KAIST in Spring 2019.

According to a Facebook post by Dinmukhamed Mailibay, the current president of KISA, the decision of postponing the election was made due to the tight schedule of students amidst the preparation for the final exams and “lack of agreement within the KISA electoral”. Upon request, KISA refused to comment on any ongoing conflicts inside the organization.