By Kerryn Williams
CANBERRA — Students were able to defeat a motion by a failed candidate to overturn the results of the recent elections to the University of Canberra students' association. The university annual general meeting, held on October 29, ratified the returning officers' report, including the election results.
However, the unsuccessful candidate, Matthew Lawrence, a member of Unity (ALP right) and a delegate to last year's National Union of Students national conference, is also seeking to replace the four democratically elected NUS delegates with himself and three others.
Resistance activist Nick Soudakoff, who was elected as an NUS delegate and as education vice-president on the ACTION ticket, was very critical of the role of ALP students throughout the student elections.
"The tactics employed by many students in both factions of the ALP right on UCAN make a farce of the whole concept of democratic student elections", Soudakoff said.
"Rather than seeking to involve students in the process of electing the incoming students' association, both the ALP students in the Straight Left ticket and Matthew Lawrence of Unity have tried every bureaucratic trick in the book to get themselves ahead."
Soudakoff contrasted the approach of the ALP students to that of the ACTION ticket, which was an alliance of progressive students: "During polling, ACTION distributed information to students about the need for an activist students' association, one that fights fees and the cuts, that campaigns against sexism and racism.
"We talked to heaps of students about why they need to take an active part in campaigning on campus. We got a really great response, and as a result the ALP students tried to find some loophole in the electoral regulations to disqualify us. This would have disenfranchised hundreds of students."
Soudakoff noted, "It's ironic that the students' association constitution, which theoretically exists to ensure that the SA is democratic and accountable, is actually manipulated by student bureaucrats like those in the ALP as a way of out-manoeuvring their opponents.
"Unity's Matthew Lawrence, who failed to convince enough students to vote for him, then went on to attempt to use other means to get the positions he wanted. It's no wonder the students' association is discredited in many students' eyes."
Following the AGM, the first meeting of the incoming students' association elected the remaining office bearers. The executive is now equally split between ALP right students and progressive students. Soudakoff concluded, "Hopefully, with a far stronger left presence in the students' association, next year it will be able to play a much greater role in building a mass campaign against the attacks on education".