By Sarah Peart and Mel Penney
SYDNEY — Elections for the Sydney Uni Student Representative Council are under way. In the context of the potential for a big education campaign, Resistance has decided to run in the elections in order to build the movement and raise the consciousness of students.
Resistance is running two tickets for general representatives. One is Resist Education Cuts (REC), running on a platform to campaign against Howard's education cuts and cuts affecting women, Aborigines, migrants and workers. REC is campaigning for an open, democratic and activist-based SRC. Resist Suharto is the other ticket, demanding that the SRC focus on solidarity with the fight for democracy in Indonesia and East Timor.
Resist are the only tickets campaigning on their true politics. Other tickets are covering up their real motives in a lot of rhetoric about campaigning against education cuts. With their alleged involvement in the campaign, the membership of the education action group has suddenly increased 10-fold — the "activists" have obviously been working underground!
The consequences of these lies will be the formation of an SRC that is completely unaccountable to students and whose majority have no intention of implementing the policies they were elected on.
The Liberals are running a front ticket called "Reform", knowing they won't be elected on their true political agenda. When students wearing Reform T-shirts are confronted on being Liberals, they reply, "Shhh".
Reform wants to increase security on campus (police squads for the poster boards!) and vows not to spend any money on "non-student" issues. The Liberals are also running a ticket under their own name, which contains rhetoric about the education campaign covered in administrative solutions.
Unity (Labor) have decided to hide their politics in a lot of left rhetoric about how committed they are to the education campaign. Unity realise that to win they need to look like activists in the education movement; hence their demand, "No fees for degrees" on their poster. Their candidate is yet another "invisible" activist. This stance is clearly contradictory to the real anti-student politics of the Labor Party.
While Unity is putting on a left face, Left Alliance has decided to hide its. The Left Alliance presidential ticket policy statement is nothing more than an extended curriculum vitae. It is attempting to win votes based more on personality politics than conscious votes for the education campaign. By not running on a strong anti-fees, anti-cuts platform, Left Alliance allows Labor and even Liberal students to claim those votes.