Court disqualifies four candidates

The Student Government Association Justices struck down the Election Commission’s decision to disqualify four members of the McHugh-Aijaz party due to code violations, but determined three of them participated in election fraud.

President-elect Michael McHugh and Natural Sciences and Mathematics senators-elect Laxmi Ramana and Brandon Balwant have been disqualified for the fraud. Mohammad Aijaz, McHugh’s running mate, was also disqualified, although the court did not say Aijaz committed fraud.

“Unfortunately, due to the joint ticket, Mohammad Aijaz will also be disqualified,” said Chief Justice Taylor Kilroy in an email announcing the decision.

Chief Election Commissioner Arsalan Razakazi declined to comment on the decision until he could speak with his fellow election commissioners, and neither Michael nor Cameron McHugh could be reached before publication.

“I speak for the Court when I say that we delivered this judgement with heavy hearts,” Kilroy said.

“It is truly regrettable to discover that fellow students aspiring to represent the student body succumbed to these temptations.”

Appeals hearing

The party members fought the original disqualification in front of the SGA Court of Appeals Monday in a two back-to-back hearings that lasted from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The Commission’s arguments during the hearings were largely based upon two student affidavits and the testimony of James Lee, a member of the McHugh-Aijaz party, while the appellants maintained a denial of the charges and said the Commission broke several rules with its actions.

“We believe that these charges brought up against the defendants were both meritless, thoughtless and were in direct violation of the election code,” said Cameron, who represented his brother and the other appellants under the guidance of Houston Attorney and former Houston City Council Member Jolanda Jones.

Cameron said the complaints of fraud were filed passed deadline, but the Commissioners said they were allowed time to investigate the allegations.

“In the election code,” said Assistant Election Commissioner Said Jalajal, “it states that because there was election fraud, we did not have to file a complaint because we as an election commission have jurisdiction to investigate and deliberate onto the actions.”

Lee said he had been given seven PeopleSoft numbers and told to use them to vote for McHugh and Aijaz in the run-off elections.

Michael denied this and said Lee was making the allegations due to bitterness over rejected romantic advances made on Michael.

Lee said this was not true.

The appellants tried twice to have Kilroy and Razakazi recused from the hearing, saying they are biased against Michael, but the motions were denied both times.

“We have, in the past, heard allegations (against) Chief Justice Kilroy about blatant bias against members of the McHugh-Aijaz party, particularly Michael McHugh,” Cameron said.

The motion against Razakazi was denied by Kilroy, who said that he could not be recused, as he was one of the appellees.

“You cannot recuse a party… so I’m going to deny that right off,” Kilroy said.

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