“There has been a genuine unfairness here and I am simply seeking justice.” These are the words of Kaled Mimouni, after the turmoil that surrounded and shocked the recent UWSU elections, where he was running for the presidency.
Last week, Kaled, who was running for the slate ‘Your 5’, was accused of misbehaviour while conducting his campaign at Marylebone Campus.
The accusations were followed by an investigation, which led UWSU Returning Officer, Jim Dickinson, to officially disqualify the candidate on Thursday.
One of Kaled’s campaign pictures
As revealed by Mimouni himself, the complaints involved him and his team repeatedly harassing voters and interfering with their selections.
However, he contested: “There’s no CCTV footage to prove such a thing. There is no evidence of me actually voting for myself. “
“For all they know, it could have been me pointing at the Internet or helping people signing in. And that is genuinely what happened.“
The complaints were first filed by another candidate, Mustafa Mahmoud and were the subject of plenty of criticism from Kaled and his supporters, especially with regards to the campaign regulators – who were in charge of supervising the operating methods of the candidates.
Mimouni protested saying: “There were regulators that should have done their job properly.”
The disqualification of the ‘Your 5’ candidate was promptly followed by a series of initiatives, including a petition and several demonstrations carried out throughout the day Friday.
“I have received an amazing support. My friends quickly started a petition and printed leaflets”, said Kaled
The Facebook page created to support Kaled
“I got over a thousand people signing this petition in the space of five hours. That’s more signatures and support than the winner candidate received for his election.”
The petition, along with an official complaint, will now be sent to the NUS by Mimouni, who wants to make his position clear once and for all: “It is not a matter of me winning the election anymore, but there has been a problem. It is not fair for a student to be disqualified on the base of what other students say.”
“It is their words against mine”, he continued. “There are more than a thousand people that say that I did not force anyone to vote for me.”
By Niccolò Misul
