The recent JCR presidential elections at St John’s have been branded ‘farcical’ as nominations were re-opened after both candidates for the position obtained too few votes in an election that was originally declared invalid.
Harry Kind obtained 29% of the vote and Shyam Thakerar 31% but RON (‘Re-Open Nominations’) emerged victorious with 40%.
Both candidates have expressed disappointment at the outcome with Kind commenting, “I wasn’t expecting us both to be RONed at all: I thought both Shyam and I were similarly matched in the campaign and that he definitely would have made a great JCR President. I’m not really sure why it happened.” He attributed some responsibility, however, to their concern for the environment, telling Cherwell, “Both Shyam and I ran low key campaigns – neither of us wanted to waste out the environment by putting posters everywhere – so it may have been that because people hadn’t seen much of us, they just didn’t vote for either of us.”
Although he admitted that only 20-30 people attended the hustings, Kind maintained that he had the chance to get his views across to the masses, commenting, “The videos [of the hustings] were watched at least a hundred times on Youtube.”
As Kind had previously run for President and Vice President unsuccessfully and had subsequently been RONed in his campaign for Academic and Access, some John’s students thought that this would be an easy victory for Thakerar. Thakerar has stressed that despite the setback, he is still keen to get involved with JCR politics, telling Cherwell, “Losing the election was obviously disappointing, but I still believe that the JCR can benefit from my policies and I am determined to run again for the opportunity to implement them.”
The elections were also originally declared invalid owing to an electoral discrepancy.
In an e-mail sent to the JCR following the election, Uche Ukachi, the current President, wrote, “I regret to inform you that the results of the elections tonight are invalid. This is because of the discrepancy between the number of people who voted and ballot papers. The difference would have been of high importance to the outcome.”
However an electoral tribunal subsequently ruled that the discrepancies were “within error and the voting scrutiny process was fair with minimal potential for multiple votes” leading to the original results standing.
When contacted, Ukachi defended his actions, claiming, “I might have generated some confusion by announcing the invalidation rather than suspension but we could not in good conscience announce results without first finding out why we were out by nine votes.”
The reaction from students has been mixed. Kind told Cherwell that, “I think most would rather us have a JCR President than not.” On the other hand, Fergus Butler-Gallie opined that “The only people who can be bothered to stand in the annual farces that are JCR elections are third rate hacks with nothing better to do, No wonder that even those (only 40% or so) who bothered to turn out chose RON by a pretty sizeable margin.”
Kind, however, suggested that this was unfair on JCR politics and that “Perhaps having previously run for positions made me look like a power-crazed hack in it for the glory, but I think if that were actually the case, I’d go for some shiny position in the Union.”
Ukachi added, “Only active engagement with JCR affairs would have generated those results. As far as I am aware, there was no RON Campaign and the result reflects the vote of the student population.”
