by Chris Neville Smith
Normally, the National President has no trouble being re-elected to get a second term of office, as has been the case for the past two decades. This year, however, there were two additional factors that stood to make the decision uncertain.
Firstly, there were seven candidates for the position - the highest there has ever been in any single-post election for years. Out of these candidates, only three of them - all current members of the NEC - were expected to have a realistic chance of winning. Labour Students and the Independent-Right seemed to have long since forgotten there differences following last year when they ran against each other, as they were both clearly backing the incumbent Labour Stduents President, Mandy Telford. This meant that the opposition had reverted to the UfE slate (renamed this year to Education Not War), getting behind the Women's Officer, Kat Fletcher, at the time in need of a better performance after her preferred successor lost the election in the normal left stronghold of the Womens' Campaign. But there was also eyes of Dervish Mertcan, and indepdent who had quite clearly split from the Independent Faction. Could he suceed where Eric Brooke narrowly failed and get into the last two? And if so, would the left transfer to him in order to get Mandy Telford out?
But the other candidates could not be ignored. Andre Walker and Joe Rukin had both prepared manifestoes that heavily attacked Mandy Telford's performance over the last year - and as neither of them expected to be elected, they pretty much had a free run to be as negative as they liked. Would this have any effect on top of the usual UfE attack. And if so, would it be Kat or Dervish who took the votes instead.
Secondly, the was an unexpected swing towards the left-backed amendemnts on means-testing, with them succeeding in getting through policy that they had failed to manage in several previous years. Was this a one-off shift in opinion on a certain issue, or was this a shift to the left across the board in Conference, initiated with either the war or the Education White Paper?
And then, finally, before the voting began, there was a final unexpected fator that came into play. It was not obvious to most of Conference until after the result has been declared, but Helen Salmon left Conference floor during the vote. It seemed that AWL and SWSS had fallen out at the last moment over an anti-war motion. AWL wanted the slogan to be "No to Saddam, No to War", whilst SWSS wanted to drop the "No to Saddam" bit so they could ... err ... unite with pro-Saddam anti-War protestors. Whatever the reason, SWSS decided not the support AWL and at least some of them boycotted the vote. Some of SBL may have boycotted the vote too, but this is in dispute.
So, the first round was announced as follows:
As expected, Telford, Fletcher and Mertcan were the front runners in the election. However, the important factor was that although Telford was in the lead, it was only a lead of 27 votes. Mertcan's situation didn't look too good in terms of making it into the last two, being 99 votes behind Fletcher. However, Conservative Future were encouraging their members to transfer to Mertcan for not being a Labour Student or hard-lefty. There was also speculation of who the Rukin supporters would transfer to next.
Turning the attention away from the top three candidates, Andre Walker managed 82 votes. That was better than any CF candidate last year, and none of the elections last year were as heavily contested, nor were any of the CF campaigns last year aimed to heavily at getting another candidate out first and getting support second (last year's VP FEUD excepted). For Conservative supporters hoping for an increase in last year's support, or keeping the place on the Block of Twelve, this was a good start. Joe Rukin's 35 votes was nowhere near a serious challenge for President, but getting these 35 votes without the help of any faction was, if these votes could be held on to, already half-way to getting a place on the Block of Twelve. Omar Bachache's 40 votes was impressive for a candidate who came out of nowhere. The only candidate who could be said to have done badly was Suckant Chandan, who was unable to attend Conference at all. Since the other two candidates on his slate withdrew in favour of ENW candidates, and Elections Committee weren't entirely sure whether or not he was going to withdraw himself, he may well have withdrawn on stage if he turned up.
So, as candidates were narrowed down to the last three, there were two critical factors. Would Kat Fletcher catch up with Mandy Telford or would tthe gap increase? And would the backing of CF be enough to get Dervish Mertcan into the last two after all?
The transfers from RON, Chandan, Rukin and Bachache (grey) didn't favour and particular candidate very strongly, but, as the leadership of CF hoped, the bulk of the Andre Walker transfer (blue) went to Dervish Mertcan. Unfortuntely for Dervish, this wasn't enough. He managed to close the gap behind Fletcher from 99 votes to 50 votes.
Although this meant that Dervish Mertcan was out of the race, he emerges with the credit of being the closest candidate to win the Presidency without seeking the backing of any major factions since the Labour vs. Left poltical landscape was created in 1998. The gap of 50 votes away from being in the last two beats the previous record of 65 votes held by Eric Brooke, and the gap of 77 votes between third and first place is without a doubt the closest three-way election to date. Had there not been such a strong swing to the left this year, or the anti-Telford camp had spent a bit less time attacking Telford and a bit more time attacking (as it became obvious later - more about this later) Telford's closest ally in this election, who knows what would have happened?
However, the last two were Telford vs. Fletcher, so now the important question was who was in the lead and whether this lead could be kept. Kat Fletcher had managed to gain 7 votes on Mandy Telford, but those Walker supporters who didn't transfer to Mertcan increased Telford's lead by 8 votes again. This meant that Mandy Telford now had a 28-vote lead to defend in a transfer of 266 votes. Amongst these were 55 votes that originally went to Andre Walker. CF pretty much despised both candidates, but the jury was out as to whether in the nightmare scenario they now faced, they would back Telford as the lesser of two evils. As for the other 211 votes, there was no precedent as to how they would go, other than Dervish himself being more anti-Telford than anti-Fletcher in his campaign. The last round went as follows (Mertcan transfer in turquoise):
Mandy Telford stayed in the lead to be re-elected, but only just. Although Dervish Mertcan's transfer was only mildly favouring Kat Fletcher over Mandy Telford, it reduced her lead from 28 votes to only 3. Although this is all that mattered for who got elected, it was interstng to note that prior to the Mertcan transfer, only 13 votes of eliminated candidates didn't transfer. When Dervish Mertcan's votes transferred, an astonishing 71 votes his 277 votes went no further. It may be that a large number of Dervish supporters didn't really mind who out of Telford or Fletcher got elected, but it could also be that those 71 thought that Telford or Fletcher was a nightmare scenario and they couldn't bear the thought of either. Was it the Conservative vote via Mertcan that didn't transfer, or was it another group? Just a little mystery on the side.
So, how does this result compare to previous years? For Labour Students, quite embarassingly. Although this is not the first time that a Labour Student has had a very narrow victory, (albeit by a relatively comfortable 15 votes), neither Andrew Pakes nor Owain James lost votes when they stood for re-election. Last year wasn't as quite a valid comparison to other years as there was a Labour vs. OI final round (hence why the lines skip over these points on the graphs), but even so, after winning with a 79-vote lead over moderate Brooks Duke, one would have expected a higher margin over a far-left opponent.
This was a massive 14.2% swing to the left from 2001. That is a huge swing and would throw even the most secure elections into doubt. But who did this apply to. Was it an increase in support for the left overall or just CFE? And was the swing against the right in general, just Labour Students, or just Mandy Telford?
More importantly, what was CFE going to make of the apparent defection from SWSS and SBL? Many CFE members were blaming SWSS for Kat's defeat in the election, and if the two halves of the left resorted to boycotting each other votes, the rest of the elections could have got nasty.
|
Omar Bachach | 40 42 46 51 |
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Sukant Chandan | 12 12 |
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Kat Fletcher | 277 278 283 290 303 316 426 |
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Dervish Mertcan | 178 182 184 193 211 266 |
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Joe Rukin | 35 36 36 |
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Mandy Telford | 304 306 306 311 323 344 429 |
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Andre Walker | 82 83 83 91 94 |
|
RON | 11 |
NUS Conference 2003
A First Timers View
On the Fringe
Cynicism, and why I don't trust it
Presidential Election
Other Full-Time Elections
Block of Twelve and Committee Elections
NUS Conference Overview
Conference Live
