A prospective presidential candidate for the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) has resigned after claiming potential opponents feared he would transform the popular weekly drinking event Port and Policy into “a left liberal utopia”.
Redha Rubaie, a second year at Corpus Christi who had been the group’s secretary, highlighted “compulsion from college relating to work” and personal reasons as behind his decision.
He also says he resigned from OUCA’s committee after his ability to run for the presidential position was “resisted by members of the group’s old established order”.
Rubaie said that he had been “punished unduly harshly” by the Association’s disciplinary committee in the weeks leading to his resignation.
Rubaie was called to attend two meetings of the disciplinary committee, which resulted in him being barred from running in future elections in the Association. They had been triggered after his “failure to issue the minutes from meetings of Council on time, failure to maintain an up-to-date activist points register, and failure to notify all officers of meetings”.
He considers some members of the disciplinary committee, which he claims is currently filled with the more conservative wing of the Association, to be opposed his more “radical” position. He alleges: “Members of the committee proactively pushed for another candidate to oppose (him)”.
Rubaie claims that his opposition feared he would “try to turn Port and Policy into a liberal-left utopia and try to impose political correctness.”
Rubaie added: “I don’t think that many people will see my resignation as a loss. The greatest pity of it, is that there are a lot of great people in OUCA, the problem is it has a weird effect on certain people.”
Rubaie did also explain, however, that he left OUCA for “non-political reasons” in his resignation letter. OUCA says his attendance at the disciplinary committee followed “breaches of an unprecedented number of rules” and “the fact that previous warnings over failures of office had not been heeded.”
The Association’s President, Matthew Burwood, said: “The former Secretary failed to fulfil these minimum requirements was legitimate ground for disciplinary action with a firm basis in the constitution and precedent.”
Potential opposition candidate, Gavin Fleming, denied that he had used his position on the disciplinary committee to damage Rubaie’s election hopes, saying he did not sit on any meetings involving Rubaie as he “thought it would be ungentlemanly of me to attend”
Fleming told Cherwell: “I vehemently believed that this boy was not fit to run the Association, and events have borne that out. He had shown himself to be inept at his job and, for his ignominious departure, he has none to blame but himself. The only story here is one of incompetence; the Disciplinary Committee came to this conclusion without my input.”
