Red Rag

Inside Cover was pretty funny today. The losing candidate for the ECU Guild presidency is trying to have the election result overturned because an international student beat him. Rob Clark thinks Umile Gwakuba will be unable to fulfil his duties because his visa prevents him from undertaking a paid full-time job.

Unfortunately, the Guild presidency is not a paid position. The outgoing president, one of Rob Clark’s mates, received a pay packet because he and his council set up and appointed each other to positions like Guild Employment Services Officer, which no longer exists (IC yesterday).

So Clark falls back on out-and-out racism:

He told IC that allegations of racism levelled against him by Mr Gwakuba’s campaign were ridiculous, but he does keep complaining that the new president struggles with English — a point he made again to IC in an email.

“…Umile Gwakuba…, as an international student with very poor English communication skills, is fundamentally not qualified to take on the arduous responsibilities of being ECU guild president,” he said.

[...]

For the record and without wanting to sound patronising, IC has had a chat with Mr Gwakuba on the telephone and apart from his African accent, his English was very good.

Nice one.

But the really funny part is Rob Clark’s conspiracy theory about Gwakuba’s campaign:

I think the Australian Labor Students group backed by Graham Giffard and ALP staff and university campaign organiser Ally Vaughn [sic] have made a bad decision to back Umile Gwakuba…

Alison Vaughan is a friend of mine. She was involved in student politics last year, but after being threatened with legal action for criticising the former guild president — yes, they’re as litigious as the Melbourne Young Liberals — she hasn’t been involved for a while.

And in any case, there is absolutely no way Ali would be in cahoots with Graham Giffard. You see, there’s these things called “factions” in the Labor Party. Giff would never be caught dead with a Misso, and Ali’s boss would certainly want to know what she was doing working for a chap from the Centre.

Rob Clark is a goose.