Democrats were unable to muster a majority to move the nomination without any Republicans present and were left to fulminate in a near-empty committee room over what several of them called Republican obstructionism.
It was followed by the disarming of the committee, the emptying of the prisons, and the purging of Jacobin clubs.
Jim Boyce, the chairman of the FIFA tournament organizing committee, said the empty seats were "one negative point".
Wherever they went in Arab centers of population, committee members encountered empty streets and Palestinian Arabs fleeing restaurants in fear for their lives.
When asked recently about the extent of Mr. Norton's future involvement, Ms. Sims responded: "Our board of trustees has four empty chairs, and our nominating committee is considering candidates.
Rushed and half-hearted committee hearings in empty rooms doesn't cut it; press conferences after the fact paves the road to resignation, ouster or unrest.
(The committee left a chair symbolically empty for him at the awards ceremony).
In addition to the men who left two empty seats in the bunker-like Fifa executive committee room, there were 14 others charged on Thursday.
"Normally, it would be completely empty," said Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the president of the organizing committee, referring to the mid-August state of Athens.
Provincial officials have not appointed replacements for the party positions abandoned by the officials who fled Wukan, Mr. Chen said, and the party committee building in the village remained empty.
Bare of furnishing and without sufficient funds to maintain it, James Lees-Milne, the secretary of the Trust's country house committee, described the mansion as an "empty and rather embarrassing white elephant".
