Chair Thijs Hahn can “well imagine” that his party may not seem particularly active at the moment, he tells Observant. “But behind the scenes, we’ve already done a lot.”
The absence of texts and photos alongside DOPE candidates’ names in the annual election paper – distributed last week as an insert in Observant – is put down to miscommunication: the information wasn’t sent to the right person in time, Hahn says. “A real shame.” As for the DOPE website being down just a week before the elections, that too was out of their hands. “A few weeks ago, we ran into some unforeseen technical issues. The site will be back online this week – just in time.”
DOPE’s absence from last week’s student party election debate, however, was a conscious decision, made following “last year’s trouble”. Last year, student party KAN accused a board member of the rival NovUM party of exerting undue influence over the debate behind the scenes – a claim the university’s Central Elections Office denied. Still, Hahn says the situation created the impression of “a biased setup”, which is why DOPE decided “to make a statement” by not taking part in this year’s debate.
Hahn isn’t concerned that this might mean reaching fewer students. “We reach a lot of people through Instagram, while we don’t know how many students actually watch the election debate.” DOPE focuses instead on “a personal approach. We’ve trained our candidates to communicate their views in conversations with fellow students. That’s what we’ll be doing next week at the faculties – each candidate in their own little corner of the university. That’s where we win our votes. We have confidence in this approach; we’ve been doing it for years.”
In addition to DOPE, the new single-candidate party Voxis (standing for both the University Council and the SBE Faculty Council) was also absent from both the election paper and the debate. Over the phone, Gregorio Amah-Tchoutchoui explains he has “unfortunately” been out of town due to personal reasons – and as the only candidate on the list, he couldn’t send a replacement. Now back in Maastricht, he plans to focus on social media and personal contact with fellow students in the coming week. “I hope that’ll be enough.”