Pulse may bow out of University student elections

Matthew Agius

Mar 20th 2010, 04:08

There is a flaw in this article:

"As the electoral system stands, the group with the most votes gets elected en bloc, regardless if a particular candidate for a post gets more votes than the candidate in the team with most votes."

Kindly consult the KSU statute.

This is not so. For example TEAM A gets an average vote of 1300 and TEAM B gets an average of 800 votes. However imagine the candidate, for example running for INTERNATIONAL OFFICER (or any other post for that matter), under TEAM B ticket gets 1400 votes and the candidate of TEAM A for the same post gets less, the one of TEAM B is elected and there is a mixed KSU executive.

I am hereby simply stating facts not defending one system or another.

It is a first-pass-the-post system, meaning that ballots are as follows:

E.g. (names are fictitious)
President
TEAM A Mr Joe Borg
TEAM B Ms Joanne Fenech
TEAM C Mr Paul Camilleri

and so on with the other posts. So actually students can vote in a mixed manner, voting for one team's candidate for President and another for SecGen, etc.

Maria Agius

Mar 17th 2010, 13:39

@ mark anthony sammut

get your facts right.

the report is correct.

it actually happened that somebody got more votes than his contender but was not elected in the council because of this block representation clause. this surely is anti democratic and defending such a statute shows how democratic and open to debate SDM are!

these same persons then have the nerve to claim about mlp's 1981 victory where the constitution said that a government 'is won by parties who obtain a majority of seats' (not majority of number of counts)

Talking about arguing consistently.........

u il-poplu jkompli jibla kollox

J. Vella

Mar 17th 2010, 11:56

We students want democracy and representation to prevail, certainly not unsuitable SDM who scrap values for partisan opportunism.

In a few minutes time, the KSU Annual General Meeting would start. Students stand up to be counted. A vote in favour of the Pulse proposal shows that we are mature enough to decide by ourselves, to enhance democracy and to have the best representatives.

SDM please keep out of student politics, popularity contests as Local Councils and the National Parliament are much better for you. There is a good number of you who contest these type of popularity contests...

When it comes to the European obligations, Article 4.1 of the European Statute says clearly that any council should be representative.

T Camilleri

Mar 17th 2010, 10:42

This is the democracy that the PN boys in SDM believe in.
No wonder the people are shown such arrogance by the SMD parent party.

Mark Anthony Sammut

Mar 17th 2010, 09:51

"As the electoral system stands, the group with the most votes gets elected en bloc, regardless if a particular candidate for a post gets more votes than the candidate in the team with most votes."

Kindly note that this is incorrect reporting. The group with the most votes TENDS to win all positions. If a particular candidate for a post gets more votes than the candidate in the team with most votes, its the candidate with the most votes that gets elected not the one from the team with the most block votes. But this occurs very rarely, if it ever occured at all.

C Buhagiar

Mar 17th 2010, 09:37

Who would want to participate in such a system? Isn't this already confirmed by the number of contesting teams and individuals? Isn't this already confirmed by the selection of SDM's candidate?

Not even SDM are bothering to strengthen KSU. Same candidates and same proposals for years. They are only interested to have all the eleven seats, just for the sake of appearing strong in the eyes of the students. Even though throught the year SDM is invisible from Campus. They rest at the KSU office, looking down on students as if we're being watched by the Big Brother.

They only stick to defend themselves and their partisan interests and only do something when they want to silence a student-editor.

May the PULSE proposal be approved today, this would end the privileges these students think they have. They are no different from the rest, they should be treated like the rest and should also give chance to the rest. If they think they enjoy the majority of the students' votes, why are they afraid of a proportional representation system which would still grant them the majority of seats!!

VERY VERY FISHY! QUITE USUAL FROM SDM....