Where is the election campaign?
Three weeks before the Student Parliament election, there is very little information to be had from the student politicians who are running for election.
Very few of the ten parties standing for office at this year’s Student Parliament election have made their campaign program for the coming period available. Only Sosialdemokratene (the Social Democrats) and Venstrealliansen (the Left Alliance) have updated and available web pages, but not even there is it possible to find an updated campaign program. At the Student Parliament website you can indeed find the names of the representatives from each party, but no information regarding what each party stands for.
Heine Skipenes, president of the Student Parliament and leader of SV-lista (the Faculty of Social Sciences' faculty list), hopes that everything will fall into place during the course of next week.
– We are in the process of collecting all election campaign information. As soon as we are finished with this, we will put out links to each party on our web pages, he says.
– Unproblematic
The Left Alliance has had as its goal to strengthen participation in student politics during the current term. Yet leader Elin Lie does not wish to state when the campaign program will be ready.
– We will certainly have it ready by April 21st, she states.
– Isn’t this a little late?
– No, I don’t think that it will be a crisis if the information does not come sooner. We think that it is very important that the party program is based on democratic principles. Therefore it is very important for there to be broad agreement regarding the program within the organization.
Thomas Syvertsen, leader of HF-lista (the Faculty of Humanities' faculty list), also finds this unproblematic.
– But this does not mean that we are poorly prepared. The Left Alliance does not in any case wish to come up with something reminiscent of a populist election program, simply to please the press, he says and elaborates:
– This will not in any case effect anyone other than ourselves, if this leads to people not voting for us.
– Must improve
Skipenes says that preparing an election program is a very comprehensive process. Amongst other things, an election committee has to go through all election materials.
– This takes a lot of time, and many of the representatives are supposed to get some studying done as well, he states.
Skipenes says that attempts at campaigning were made before Easter, but that they then received feedback saying that this was too early. However, the last week before elections things will really get going, with campaigning events every day.
– Do you not think that better information will lead to more widespread election participation?
– Yes, absolutely. Information is the key, and we are not good enough at this. The more information we could get out there, the better it would be for voter participation, he says.
