Following Aaisha Latif?s shock resignation shortly after her election as C&G President and some three months of speculation and intrigue, the City and Guilds College Union has finally elected Siddharth Singh, ISE student and current Guildsheet editor, as its new boss. In a fairly low key election run alongside ICU?s Council elections, Mr Singh was returned by 214 votes against the 78 achieved by his only rival, RON (Re Open Nominations).

The news has brought a wave of relief over the Union as many insiders were secretly concerned that Mr Singh wasn?t quite up to beating the notorious RON. Mr Singh has amassed an impressive collection of election defeats during his time at IC, most notably in March this year where he came a close second behind Aaisha Latif in the last Presidential election. Speaking to journalists outside the Guilds office on the morning of the result, Mr Singh said that after months of doubt and conjecture, it was time to ?get on with the job.?

?We will continue the agenda we have in place and aspire to represent the students as well as best as we can.? The new president was also keen that we print the latin word ?Fiducia?, highlighting perhaps why it?s taken him so long to get elected.

Almost as relieved as Mr Singh following this result was Chris McIver, who has been juggling the demanding roles of Vice President and Acting President for almost three months. As returning officer Chris was also pleased that the election had passed off peacefully and with a respectable turnout. When asked what Mr McIver intends to do now that some of the weight of C&G is off his shoulders, he said ?I?m off to a meeting,? and vanished.

A week of election mayhem

The C&G Presidential election was just one of many taking place at IC last week.

In other engineering elections Henri Ozarovsky narrowly defeated RON by 151 votes against 126 to become the new faculty Research representative (Academic Affairs Officer in Union jargon) whilst in the uncontested Mech Eng dep rep election both Hannah Chalmers and Timur Sugito beat RON by 37 votes against 8. With a turn out of less than 1%, this represents yet another blistering display of Mechanical Engineering apathy.

Mr Ozarovsky was keen to point out that despite being the Research Rep for engineers, he?s also here for undergraduates too. Speaking to Guildsheet he said ?If there are any undergrads out there who want to talk about what it?s like doing postgraduate study then please give me a call on x57112. In fact if anyone wants me to do anything then just give me a call and I?ll sort it out.?

The whole world and his dog seemed to be running for ICU council positions last week and at the time of writing the results had not yet been announced. More amusingly, perhaps, over in the SAF building some 14 daft biology students were competing against eachother to become ?Faculty of Life Sciences Student Union Health and Safety Officer?. For a faculty union with no clubs and, more importantly, no cars (unlike C&G?s awesome collection), this struck us as being a bit weird.

A few outstanding issues remain following these elections and speculation is rife on who will replace Singh as Guildsheet Editor. This matter, along with the elections to the vitally important role of ?Spanner Bearer?, will be dealt place at the first general meeting of the year on Tuesday 1st November at 1pm in the C&G Office. So if you?re interested in finding a role in C&G, come along (there?ll be free food).

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