March 26, 2008 CAMPUS

New Watergate in UPEI?

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Recent Student Union election brings back memories of other elections

By Amirhossein Hosseinzadeh Contributor

In the election that occurred in uni- versity, unlike the imagination of people especially international stu- dents like me that expect an absolutely free election , this kind of election and its results made me sur- prised. The only thing that didn't exist in this election was Freedom in its ecumenical known meaning. The first thing that was observable dur- ing the election advertisement was a kind of unwilling of majority of stu- dents to participate in the election that the final result of election which shows not participating of about 80

per cent of students, shows this real- -

ity.

This unwilling might have root in experiences of those students who were here last year and transmit their experiences to new __ students. Students have this feeling that their participation and the candidates they choose don't have any effect on their status.

So, it doesn't make any difference for them that who will be choose. The second thing might be, with any reason, students are not sure about veracity and honesty of election. They think that this election is superficial and candidates are dative.

Voting Process

In all the countries, unlike the improvement of technology, election is paper based and the votes calcu- late with attendance of nonpartisan and also the candidates can have a represented person in period of cal- culation. These acts prevent cheating and also if any of the candidates have a complaint, the votes can be re-calculated. I don't controvert the

high level of today's technology but no one can controvert that many irrevocable damages occurred by these technologies. The second thing is, according to law of elections that was published on the Student Union webpage about disqualification; dis- qualifications should be done before the vote calculation, not after the result! Now, this

ques- §& tion will come _ that why candidates

who became disqualified,

were mostly the choice of students and if they couldn't get that much of the votes, did they become disquali- fied? Another question comes here.

Don't you think that this is disre- spect to people who voted them? And a third question comes; don't you think that such kind of acts make these students unwilling to participate in future elections and there students will add to the previ- ous students who didn't vote?

By analyzing the above issues, you might ask, what's the right way?

In my opinion, a bit before the elec- tion, University should take the healthy and democratic decisions. First of all, it should let students know about the importance of this election and how it makes difference

to student's status. So, we will not be bystander of participation of about one fifth of students. Second of all, in today's world, there are profes- sional people who have the ability to break the strong and complex secu- rity systems of organizations. Even the strongest organizations never say that their systems in 100 per cent | », secure. So, -m you

some- times in the news about these secu-

rity

hear

advertising carefully and take all the complains of candidates (if any) and take appropriate reactions against these things before the election boxes open and the vote calculation start. So, the imagination of disqual- ification will not be getting more votes.

I recommend that because of the person who become the president should have the high favourite per- centage among the students and also today we can see that students even don't know who the current presi- dent of SU is, or what does he do or what kind of person he is, University can set an at least percentage of par- ticipation like 40, 50, or Otherwise, if University couldn't make this motivation among the stu- dents to vote, it could find the presi- dent like the other student positions

- by exams or interviews to find a

suitable person for this job. So, the word of "Election" will not be tri- fled.

issues. In addition, you have to keep in mind that

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voting in pare will increase the security and it's more efficient if students make sure nonparti-

san people will calculate their votes. T h e

University should try its best to ana- lyze the

process of

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