Student meeting fails to discuss agenda amid noisy exchanges

The University Students' Council's annual general meeting yesterday took over five hours to start discussing the items on the agenda as confrontation over technicalities bogged down proceedings.

Clashes between the Christian Democrat organisation SDM and left-leaning organisations Pulse and Moviment Graffiti, among others, characterised the meeting, which started at noon but had discussed nothing on the agenda by 5 p.m.

At one stage, when Anton D'Amato, a former SDM and the University Students' Council (KSU) member, walked into the room as an observer, some people started chanting "sfiduċjat" and "fascist", even though Mr D'Amato had not said anything at that stage.

The jibes continued from both sides, with SDM shouting in favour of the chairman and other students chanting "monopolju" (monopoly) to the SDM and KSU.

The burning issue in the meeting was meant to be the electoral reform proposed by Pulse, which would mean there would be proportional representation in the students' council, rather than the present first-past-the-post system.

But Pulse, along with Graffitti, eventually stormed out of the meeting and so could not vote in favour of the motion the group itself had passed.

As the electoral system stands, candidates from the students' group that wins the highest number of votes gets elected en bloc, even if a particular candidate for a post gets more votes than the candidate in the team that wins most votes.

Members of Pulse and Graffiti protested to the chair that efforts were being done to derail the debate on the electoral reform.

Pulse said that "after considerable efforts to keep order, it became apparent that a mature discussion was unattainable. This forced Pulse representatives, among others, to abandon the meeting and withdraw their motion".

At one point, Matthew Vella, who chaired the AGM, said the meeting could not go on. However, Angelo Micallef, of SDM, contested the decision, following which the press was asked to leave the room in order for a secret vote to be taken.

SDM deplored Pulse and Graffiti for "the hostile and insolent behaviour" displayed during the meeting.

Graffiti and Pulse, on the other hand, condemned SDM for monopolising the KSU and not letting democracy prevail.

Other students were disappointed at the way things progressed.

This was the first KSU AGM that Nicholas Bugeja, a 19-year-old engineering student attended. He later said: "I'm under the impression there's a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy and there's a lot of confrontation. I don't think I'll ever come to another one of these meetings."

Franco Rizzo, a 22-year-old student, active about student issues, complained that, year in, year out, the same story unfolds. "There's a lot of waste of time so that the real issues will never be discussed".