Photo Courtesy / Jessica Lee

On Mar. 4, the SL 232 boardroom was packed with more onlookers than usual for the SCSU’s monthly board meeting.

Many of those present must have gotten wind of the widely circulated rumours of drama surrounding the SCSU 2010/2011 presidential elections. It had been widely known prior to the meeting that several candidates had been questionably disqualified from their respective races.

VP Students & Equity, Zahra Murji, a landslide victor in her re-election race, was said to have received 10 strikes, double the five needed to be officially disqualified. Two other candidates were also belatedly disqualified on the eve of the Feb. 16 to18 election.

These issues alone were expected to raise a great furor at the ratification meeting. However, there was no anticipating the debacle that was to unfold in the six-hour marathon session that eventually played out, and the shocking revelation made at the meeting’s climax: that the entire election was run on an outdated election policy.

The CRO’s Report:

Head of the independent elections committee, Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Minhaj Showkat, was visibly exhausted and irked, but this did not stop him from delivering a scathing elections report.

In an emotionally-charged delivery, he lambasted several parties who, in his opinion, showed utter disrespect to his authority as CRO of the elections committee.

He was heavily critical of certain candidates on whom he had bestowed official strikes for campaign infringements during the elections. He accused the stricken candidates of not going through official appeals processes as outlined in the election policy.

According to the policy, candidates who receive strikes must first appeal them directly to the CRO and the elections committee; if this appeal is unsuccessful, they may then approach the other independent committee, the elections appeals committee, who then has final say on the validity of strikes.

Showkat claimed that several stricken candidates bypassed the initial appeal and went straight to the appeals committee, who then made final decisions regarding the appeals. He felt that this undermined the elections process, as well as his authority.

He also accused the elections liaison, current SCSU President John Aruldason, of trying to force Showkat into overturning strikes issued on certain candidates. He was heavily critical of Aruldason’s alleged continued interaction with several candidates, as well as the appeals committee.

In an interview response, Aruldason said that any contact he had with either the elections committee, the appeals committee, or any candidates, were a result of them coming to him first, and that the CRO’s accusations were “completely unfounded.”

In the end, Showkat recommended that all of the election winners be ratified, except for Murji; he recommended that the runner-up in the Students & Equity race, current VP Academics Sulaimaan Abdus-Samad, be ratified into office instead.

The Confusion That Ensued:

Photo Courtesy / Jessica Lee

The confusion that followed was ludicrous at best. Candidates, directors and students were clearly divided, and no one could seem to make a convincing argument as to what the right course of action should be.

The most debate surrounded the issue of the striking and appeals process. While some members accepted Vice-Chair Ali Chaudhury’s interpretation of the election policy with regards to appeals, many did not concur, and a clear divergence of opinions arose.

One candidate, Daniel Moghbel, had good reason to be peeved. He was disqualified because one of the names on his candidate nomination form was deemed to not be on the voter’s list, leaving Moghbel one name short of the 25 needed to validate his nomination.

He was supposed to be given notice of his disqualification within 48 hours of the Jan. 26 deadline to submit nomination forms. However, Moghbel was only notified the night before the elections on Feb. 15, after several weeks of intense campaigning.

The CRO’s official excuse for the this late notification is the late submitting of an updated voter’s list from the Department of Student Life, but the department subsequently denied having had such a lengthy delay in handing over the list.

Furthermore, the same student whose name was not verified managed to successfully vote in the election.

As the meeting progressed, what was supposed to be an organized, highly democratic procedure turned out to be a series of emotional exchanges between a dichotomy of viewpoints. Toward the end, the proceedings were littered with untimely interjections, raised voices and allegations.

Chair of the board, Katrina Truong, in her attempts to remain impartial and allow as many people to voice their opinions as possible, in the end struggled to control an increasingly agitated group.

Photo Courtesy / Jessica Lee

The Knockout Punch:

The biggest blow of the night came when Amir Bashir, former interim SCSU president and current member of the governing council, came into the meeting and knocked everyone’s socks off with a mind-numbing reality.

After looking over a handout copy of the SCSU election policy, Bashir pointed out discrepancies between the policy used in the recent election, and an amended policy that had been ratified when he had been in office.

He was able to produce documented evidence supporting his claim that the policy used in this year’s election was indeed an outdated policy. The once boisterous room was then hit by a stunned silence as the gravity of the situation began to sink in; the possibility of having to throw out an entire election based on an apparent record-keeping error.

Winded and clueless as to the next course of action, the board of directors was eventually forced to table the results to the next meeting, in an attempt to find some precedence that would serve to guide the next course of actions.

The Aftermath:

Aruldason could not say how the wrong policy came to be followed for the election. He felt that further investigation was needed to discover just why this monumental mistake occurred. He also stressed the importance of finding and setting a logical precedence going forward, and doing what was in the best interest of the UTSC students.

At the time of the interview, Truong was not sure what to make of the policy error, and was not sure what the board should do next.

“It is up to us to try to figure out which takes precedence, the policy or the timeline,” she said.

She said that the continuity of transitioning SCSU executives was most likely to blame for the mistaken policy fiasco.

The prospect of a re-election was not well received by all the winning candidates. Abdalla Al-Baalawy, the winner of the VP External race, passionately criticized the board for the fiasco, and claimed that he would not run in a re-election, simply because it would be too demanding and would negatively affect his school work.

Carl Bagot, the winner for VP Academics, agreed.

“It’s just too much stress,” Bagot said. “I don’t think I’d be up for that again.”

Currently, the executive is scouring through records of past SCSU meetings, in a desperate attempt to find something that would shed light on their issue and guide their next course of actions.

Aruldason said that the ideal situation would be to find a way to ratify this election, one way or another.

No matter what ends up happening, one thing is for certain: with the paltry voter turnout, and the myriad of problems hindering the ratification of election results, it is clear that this year’s election will stand out as a severe blemish on the credibility of our student union.