Division sparked as Boost accused of harassment
Josie Jakovac has been accused of accosting Mandarin speaking campaigners
Disclaimer: Editors Pranay Jha and Liam Thorne are not involved in the 2019 coverage of the Honi Soit, NUS and SRC elections.
Allegations have surfaced that Josie Jakovac (Mod Lib), running for President under Boost branding, accosted members of Cupcake tickets yesterday for speaking Mandarin to each other outside the Abercrombie Business School during polling.
The conduct allegedly occurred after Jakovac became aware that Cupcake had not featured her name on their how-to-votes.
Honi understands that when Jakovac realised that the member of Cupcake was not campaigning in a foreign language (which would constitute a breach of the Regulations), but rather merely speaking to her campaign manager, she did not apologise. Members of Cupcake have asserted that Jakovac had followed and filmed them before this incident occurred.
“Josie suddenly stopped us with her phone filming and accusing us for breaching the campaign regulation. She scared me very much and deeply hurt my feelings,” stated the Cupcake campaigner in question, Ms Qian.
Jakovac did not provide comment to Honi regarding her conduct, nor did she confirm whether or not she agrees with regulations that forbid campaigning in a foreign language.
“Otilia was crying after Josie’s attack and could not be able to campaign for the whole day,” Cupcake said in their public statement.
Cupcake is a nascent grouping that formed following fractures within Panda as to whether or not to support Jakovac for president. Unlike Panda, the group is not showing support for any presidential candidate.
“We are an independent team, and it is our freedom to vote whoever we would like to be the president. I think Josie intentionally made trouble for us just because we did not support her publicly” said Ms Qian.
