Jitta elected UWI St Augustine guild president

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Pro­duc­er/Re­porter

A new lead­er­ship team is set to take over the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Guild of Stu­dents fol­low­ing its an­nu­al elec­tions.

On Thurs­day night, it was an­nounced that 21-year-old Joshua Jit­ta was elect­ed guild pres­i­dent, se­cur­ing 2,178 votes.

As the sole can­di­date in the race, how­ev­er, he al­so re­ceived 966 no-con­fi­dence votes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Jit­ta said an or­gan­ised “no con­fi­dence” cam­paign had been mount­ed by some mem­bers of the out­go­ing ex­ec­u­tive, but he in­tends to serve the stu­dent body.

One of his key cam­paign promis­es is greater ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­clud­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of all guild spend­ing, which he said had not been con­sis­tent­ly done in pre­vi­ous years.

“We ran on the idea of ac­count­abil­i­ty be­cause there have been fi­as­cos where the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive would have en­dorsed cer­tain pieces of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy or leg­is­la­tion or cir­cum­stances that were not a re­flec­tion of stu­dent voic­es,” Jit­ta said.

“It's my in­ten­tion to serve all stu­dents, fair­ly, with­out mal­ice, and rep­re­sent their voic­es. Be­cause that is some­thing that has not been hap­pen­ing to the best of what it should be.”

Mean­while, in­com­ing vice pres­i­dent Ryan Dun­can may have be­come the youngest per­son ever elect­ed to that role at age 18.

Dun­can, who is pur­su­ing a cer­tifi­cate in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and will be­gin un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies in Sep­tem­ber, se­cured 1,260 votes.

“Yes, I may be the youngest coun­cil­lor. But I will bring fresh ideas, a fresh face and a new voice to the coun­cil. It re­al­ly came down to my friends ask­ing me to step up and rep­re­sent them. Be­cause they saw the po­ten­tial in me and I an­swered.”

In the race for sec­re­tary, Jo­han­na Julien won with 1,328 votes, while Anaqet Williams se­cured the post of trea­sur­er with 1,167 votes.

Out­go­ing guild pres­i­dent Vedanand Har­gob­in con­test­ed the post of post­grad­u­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tive but was un­suc­cess­ful. Zephion Lee-Har­ris won the po­si­tion.