Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 9. 1st May 1974

Elections: Vorster wins in South Africa McDonald. . . . Victoria

Elections: Vorster wins in South Africa McDonald. . . . Victoria

Image of a face

1016 students were short-sighted enough to vote John McDonald into the presidency of VUWSA last week. His main rival was Don Carson who polled 539 votes. Last and least were Stephen Lungley (104) and Peter Rotherham (105).

In the election for NZUSA Liaison officer Anthony Ward beat Tony Lane by 918 votes to 318. In this election there were 486 informal votes (i.e. both candidates crossed out). There were only 40 informals in the presidential ballot.

McDonald's victory came after a concerted effort on his behalf by an ugly bunch of right wingers who crawled out from under their stones especially for the campaign. They were mostly in evidence on polling days, hovering round voting tables "to check that there wasn't any cheating going on", or so they said. They expended a lot of effort confronting new students with a hard sell. "Have you voted yet?" If they hadn't, the fresher was marched off to the voting tables and virtually compelled to vote McDonald. In some cases McDonald supporters actually filled in other people's forms for them.

One of the most pathetic features of the campaign was McDonald's publicity, and it is an indictment of 1016 student's mentality that they didn't see through it. The crudest and most widely distributed was a leaflet based on a 1970 Salient editorial, using the "Salient" masthead and the editorial's headlines "What the Silent Majority Wants" and "And What It Should Get". The original Salient editorial had a blank space under each headline, to make a point about the silent majority. McDonald photocopied the Salient layout and inserted his policy under the "What the Silent Majority Wants" and his own picture under the "And What It Should Get".

The policy was pretty weak. The first point merely said "Student money for Student Welfare". This is vague, as most student money already goes to student welfare. Presumably he means that all of it should go to student welfare, but he didn't have the guts to say so. If he or any other student was opposed to the giving of $200 to the Pensioners Association for instance, then he should have said so at the AGM, when this was decided.

The second policy point merely said "Dances, Stein evenings, social activities". Again McDonald failed to say what he is going to do about these. The vague ideas that he and his incoherent supporters expressed elsewhere were that more of these functions are needed. A catchy platform to run on except that it bears no relation to reality. In fact there are more than enough functions being put on in the Union, the only trouble with them is poor attendance. Advertising won't solve the problem either, because the cause of it is the vastly increased workloads that have been imposed upon students.

"Better food and cafe facilities" said the third policy point. But how? McDonald and his mates have never been seen at a Union Management or Catering meeting, so he is just jumping on a bandwagon. Any student pissed off with the cafe should go to one of these meetings to see the enormity of the problem and the efforts that are being made to solve it, instead of moaning and doing nothing.

All the fourth point said was "Capping, Procesh, etc" but this was no doubt enough to drag in the votes. If only there were 1016 people prepared to clean up the chunder and broken glass, etc.

"Clean out Salient"

The fifth point of McDonald's policy was the most interesting for me. It said "Clean out Salient and what it stands for". When I taxed McDonald on this point he was totally tongue-tied. He was unaware that the President according to the Constitution has no more power over Salient than any other student. It has long been a principle that Salient has an editorial policy independent of the executive of the Students' Association. This policy point was the closest McDonald came to openly expressing his right-wing dictatorial leanings, and he was upset when his constitutional impotence was revealed to him. Since his "clean out" undoubtedly included getting rid of freedom of speech and criticism, he will no doubt now attempt to "clean out" the constitution.

But that's not the main argument against this particular-plank in McDonald's policy. When I asked him for criticisms of Salient, which we welcome, he was unable to produce any. All he could do was stumblingly convey that he disagreed with its politics. He admitted that he had never submitted articles, let alone had them refused. Come on you right-wingers, you'll have to be more coherent than that!

I got a clearer picture of what the "clean out Salient" policy means when six of McDonald's henchmen, at least one of whom is well known for his pro-apartheid views, swaggered into the Salient office a couple of days before the election. The night before I had persuaded McDonald himself to cut the "Salient" masthead from his leaflet as it falsely implied that this newspaper endorsed him. Further, using our masthead was a breach of the Copyright laws, which McDonald admitted that he knew. McDonald's mates told me in heavy tones that they didn't like me "intimidating" him. I might have succeeded with McDonald, they said, but they wouldn't be intimidated by me, they would go on handing out the false and illegal leaflet, and if I tried to stop them there would be trouble for me.

They grabbed a pile of clippings I had of the illegal part of the leaflet and refused my request that they give them back. After threats of violence had been exchanged between us, they left the office. I had no doubt in my mind that they would try to carry out their threats if they thought the need arose. To me it was the ugliest scene I have experienced at this university, with the possible exception of the violence against demonstrators at the PBEC Conference, 1972.

McDonald's sixth policy point simply described himself as 'a president who reflects true student opinion'. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this election is that 'student opinion', if represented by McDonald's 17% mandate, is an ignorant and potentially brutal thing.