Petition to resolve bribery charges stuck in neutral

A petition spearheaded to hold last spring's Student Association election winners accountable for charges of bribery and slander has made little progress in two months, but its organizers say they are looking to regain lost momentum this week.

Francisco Baiocchi, who ran with Matt Pelkey for SUNY SA delegate positions last semester with the Reform Our Campus party, said they currently have several hundred signatures and hope to get 1,000 by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, the current chair of SA's Election and Credentials committee, Avneet Jacob, says he is trying to make a ruling as soon as possible, but the former chair left with all his notes on the case and Jacob has had to work from scratch with the SA Assembly.

"I'm coming into this as a clean slate, so I can see both sides," Jacob said. "More than anything, a case like this is all based on evidence."

All the charges revolve around last spring's SA election and a taped conversation in which now-Treasurer Mazin Kased offered Baiocchi a job with SA if he were to drop from the election and turn on his fellow party members.

Although the charges were filed eight months ago, the former E&C chair never made a ruling. If Pelkey and Baiocchi can gather 1,577 signatures -- the number of voters in the election -- then they can force the case out of SA's hands and over to the Student-wide Judiciary.

The petition's goal is to focus on Kased, but it could also begin the impeachment process for the entire Elevation '05 party, which includes now-President Dela Yador, Vice President Sonia Kang and Kased.

Since the petition started, it has been re-drafted to be less of an indictment, Baiocchi said, and now it is geared to appeal to any student who cares about SA's standing in the UB community.

"I would hope the way this petition reads now that Dela will sign it, Mazin will sign it," he said.

"The simple fact is there are open issues that haven't been resolved that could have seriously changed the outcome of the election," Baiocchi said, adding there are also charges against him that haven't been addressed. "Even though it's November now and the election was months ago, it's only sensible that we look into it."

Kased, who in past interviews said he has nothing to worry about from any ruling's outcome because he did nothing wrong, told The Spectrum this week he has been advised by his attorney not to comment.

Yador repeated an axiom of his throughout the situation, saying he has no hard feelings towards anyone from the Reform Our Campus party.

"If they feel that's what they need to do, then so be it," he said.

According to Baiocchi, he and Pelkey had hoped to be done with the petition already, but "it lost a lot of momentum because it's relaying on Matt and I, who are two very busy seniors."

Jacob, the new E&C chair, said the case has been extremely frustrating on several levels. One, when he took the job, he was never told he would have to deal with these charges. And two, the information he has to work with is in pieces.

"Were just going to do everything by the book pertaining to the information that I have," he said. "Joe (Varghese, former E&C chair) left with a lot of the information, so I'm working with the information we have."

Jacob, a senior who has never held a job with SA before, said he is putting an emphasis on working quickly and efficiently without any bias to reach an outcome for all the parties involved.

"I would love to get this done by this semester and get some type of ruling out," he said. "The issue with the ruling...no matter what, someone's going to be angry. Either way, it's going to be appealed."

That the case is almost automatically going to the Student-wide Judiciary despite his ruling is perhaps the most frustrating part of all, Jacob said, since it means all his work is for nothing.

"But really on a large scale, this involves the entire student body, and it's something that needs to be addressed," he said.

"This is a process that is going to take some time and a lot of people are frustrated," Jacob added. "But in order to get this resolved, it needs to be done thoroughly.

According to Baiocchi, the main matter is that if anyone cares about SA they will look at these charges against Kased and resolve them.

"It's like when they canceled the Senate elections (because there were no opponents). That was one thing," Baiocchi said. "But then to go on the cover of The Spectrum and say it's because everyone trusts us?Nit's political blasphemy."