UK: Student union scraps election after president's 'Zionist' comment

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

A university's students' union has cancelled an election for one of its offices after its president appeared to describe one of candidates as a “very Zionist type person” and urged people to vote for his opponent. 

Candidates were standing for a role on the democratic procedures committee (DPC) at the University of the West of England (UWE). 

The committee oversees the democratic process at the Bristol-based university and has five members responsible for voting on student ideas. 

Voting in the election was due to close tomorrow. However, in screenshots of a message from a Whatsapp group, Zain Choudry, union president, sent what he described as “an urgent call out to all of you". 

“Please vote for Alex to be a member of the DPC instead of this William Bates as he is a very Zionist type person who pushes for Israel flags to be put up outside of the SU [student union] and wants to end the BDS campaign,” Mr Choudry wrote. (...)

Speaking to the JC, Mr Bates said that he was “surprised by Zain’s comments”. “They [the comments] are an obvious breach of the election rules and the position I was running for had nothing to do with Israel, and so it seems to me that it could be questioned what 'very zionist type of person' means to him here,” he said. 

He added that although he was not Jewish, his campaign “was supported by several Jewish students, which probably led to this.  

“I have no idea where he got the claim regarding Israel flags outside the SU from, although UWE does have a flagpole that flies international flags for various national days and I wouldn't be opposed to that in that context.”

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