Day 5
And this was when the actions all started to get hotter. The college gripping into election fever…..We had been sleeping till late due to last days work. Our posters had created reactions in the opposition. And there was a rumour or truth spreading that some of the seniors from LH were harassing the students who supported us. And we decided to clear the notions by talking before the class after our exams. Anyway we bunked it and went to college later that evening. And there we witnessed a march by SFI with mainly first year nursing students masked by the regular members.
Only when we individually talked to the girls had we known there spirit. There had been a news report in the Mathrubhumi newspaper about the events on the nomination day. It said we tried to submit the nomination paper after time limit and they resisted. At last police came to clear us. And its clear that they would not give this news to Deshabhimani the party newspaper but to a neutral one to take it before the campus the next day. They had brought out posters of the papercutting. And our girls told they wanted some posters immediately to counter them in the hostel and mess.
We had a talk to the whole batch when everyone came forward in support. But many thought some candidates were not competent enough, but what we valued was at least the ability to stand against a strong and established power. Since the points were known to all the applauses were immediate. And during the last elections almost 95%of us voted for SFI, and at that time there was no active opposition. And we realised no one else should fall in that trap again. During the first and second years when we look at the whole situation, whatever we did was by SFI. But actually there were not more than !0 or 20 SFI members involved in any of the activities. All of us had been sweating hard and the credit as usual and as normal goes for the college union headed by SFI.
The days yet to come were of arduous labour and the nights sleepless.
And now we were getting ready for the grand bash and their was fear in the eyes of our opposition. But we decided to do it calm and positively. And no negative campaigning should be resorted from our part was our decision. And we had a small campaigning in the hostel to the first years. They were the ones who were most easily taken under arms. Whoever talks to them most and last would be in an advantage. And this was our case too in the first year. If we would be able to convince them the truth of who did everything and what actually they did victory could be sure by the whole 200 votes, but that was a near impossible according to our assumption.
In the speech in the hostel our candidates bashed at the opposition and we were at a prominent advantage then. The juniors themselves called us and voiced their support but the news reached their ears too. They made a few of the SFI supporters in the batch to hold their general body and raise voice that we were uttering complete nonsense and would induce a batch split on their side. The negative campaigning was so strong that there was news from ladies hostel that they had even labelled some of us homosexuals.
And one of our main weapon was the magazine, which according to them would be a quarterly magazine was released once in two years and that too just before the elections. And when we said the money for one years magazine was lapsed they changed it in such a way that we started negative campaigning by saying the magazine editor tipped off the amount. With his good image it was sure to turn against us, but it couldnot last long
