Rather than providing an opening statement at the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union open forum on Tuesday afternoon, presidential candidate Zahra Sultani announced her resignation from the race.
The third of the four presidential candidates to walk up to the podium, Sultani gave a speech that surprised the audience of Laurier students. Thanking her campaign team and supporters, Sultani said she had decided to step down from the race while simultaneously endorsing presidential candidate Michael Onabolu.
During her speech she noted that there were difficulties in her campaign nearing the end of last week and accusations were made against her. When asked to clarify this in an interview following her announcement, Sultani said that she was unable to provide details about the matter as of yet. She then added, “I will let you know as soon as I get more details because it is something I would like people to know about.”
Speaking about her campaign team, Sultani expressed that she was grateful for the time spent with the members. Furthermore, on the election as a whole, she said, “I want to tell all my friends, all those people who Iโve talked to in the past week … I want them to all get engaged with WLUSU and the student governance, something that Iโve said so many times, it is our money and it is our community and we want to make the best out of it.”
In giving her resignation, her endorsement for Onabolu was cut short by the moderators as it was not permitted during the forum.
However, Sultani in later explaining her confidence in the other candidate said, “When I first met Mike at the beginning of the campaign I said to myself if I wasn’t running for this position I would definitely be on this guy’s campaign.”
“He knows what’s going on, he has knowledge, he has experience.”
Keep visiting thecord.ca and check out the Feb. 1 edition of The Cord for all your latest WLUSU election news.
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