GSA VP suspended

Allegations of election fraud, heated debate dominate council meeting

Tessa Vanderhart Staff

Debate over the GSA executive election culminated in the temporary suspension of vice-president (student affairs) Sola Ajiboye, amid allegations of election fraud, and threats of a lawsuit.

The suspension followed from a lively debate surrounding the presentation to the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) council of the official election results by Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Julia Campbell at the council meeting held Monday, March 20.

Ajiboye is suspended until such time as he clarifies whether he intends to submit a lawsuit against the GSA for defaming him. Statements he allegedly made while scrutineering the GSA election on March 3 were included in the CRO’s official election report, which Ajiboye claimed is a violation of provincial defamation laws.

Campbell repeated Ajiboye’s alleged statements during the ballot counting for council: “People died over elections and this can happen in Canada.”

Graduates for Progressive Action (GPA) scrutineers Jason Bland and Colin Szcerzski presented a document with their recollection of the statements made by Ajiboye. According to Bland and Szcerzski, the statements can be attributed to both Ajiboye and last year’s CRO, Roland Pajares, who was also serving as a scrutineer for the Time for Change slate. Julie Boutilier, the CRO for Health Sciences who was also present during the ballot-counting, said she was offended by Ajiboye’s comments.

Ajiboye also asked for substantiation of Bland’s report at the March 20 meeting. Bland responded that it was accurate to the best of his knowledge, adding that he had written down what he remembered shortly after it happened.

“That’s why I was there; I was there to scrutinize,” said Bland.

Gallant noted that earlier on Monday, March 20, Ajiboye had informed her of his intent to file a lawsuit regarding the statement attributed to him in the CRO’s report.

When asked if he was intending to file a lawsuit, Ajiboye responded: “It’s not a simple yes or no.”

He requested substantiation of the CRO’s report, to ensure that it is true.

“If you wrote a report, you should stand by it. Whether you need to retract anything, that’s up to you,” Ajiboye said.

As the discussion in council became more intense, UMSU representative to council and director of student affairs, Josh Mason, accused Ajiboye of attempting to “bait” councilors into making statements for use in a lawsuit.

UMSU councillor and vice-president-elect (student affairs) Jason Kelly said that he did not feel comfortable participating in the council discussion until he knew whether his words would be used in a lawsuit. GSA council then moved to closed session in a unanimous vote, and came temporarily back into open session to move for Ajiboye’s suspension. He refused to turn in his keys, and had to be escorted to his office to collect his things.

Two other complaints had previously caused controversy in this election. The first called for the two vice-presidential candidates of the GSA slate to be disqualified on the basis that e-mails sent by them to third-party campaigners were illegal campaign materials.

Esosa Osagie, a presidential candidate, spoke to the complaints, but tried to quell the controversy. “We’ve had too much drama today,” she said.

Jason Bland, who had served as campaign manager for the GPA slate, said that the e-mails had little effect, given that the margin of victory for both vice-presidential candidates was over 50 votes.

“50 votes — by GSA standards, it was a landslide,” Bland said. “I’m sorry, but [Time for Change] lost.”

Still more controversy surrounded the GSA elections from the beginning, as the Time for Change slate boycotted the election forum on the grounds that the GPA slate served to gain from the referendum on graduate student fee restructuring being held at the same time as the general election. The complaint was denied, but not before allegations were levied that holding the referendum on the popular topic served to benefit returning GSA councillors Gallant, Kelly and Matt McLean, who stepped down from the fee restructuring committee upon announcing candidacy for the executive.

Council also ratified the election results in the course of the meeting. The CRO reported that 506 ballots were counted, after spoiled ballots were removed. Council then approved the incoming GSA executive: president-elect Megan Gallant, vice-president-elect (student affairs) Jason Kelly, and vice-president-elect (finance) Matt McLean.

The GSA representatives to UMSU for 2006-07 will be: Stephen Abioye, Faisal Shibley, Patrick Fortier, and Yunfa Zhu. The GSA representatives to Senate will be: David Zhang, Samuel Ima, and Suresh Neethirajan.

“This is the second election in a row that we’ve had this malarkey about who’s done what with campaigning,” said McCaughney. For future elections, a motion passed unanimously to allow posters during elections, and to consider e-mails as campaign materials, to avoid these issues next year.

Before the meeting closed, a petition was presented to chair of council Megan Gallant requesting a special meeting of council to discuss the impeachment of vice-president Ajiboye. There were 22 signatures on the petition.