The Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) elections office awarded team A New RRRA two harassment violations March 10 after receiving separate complaints alleging misconduct by the slate’s campaign manager John Mesman, chief electoral officer David Valentin said.
The complainants, the names of whom are kept confidential by the elections office due to the nature of the offences, say both incidents occurred March 7 at Oliver’s Pub, according to the official rulings.
The first complaint indicated that Mesman was “yelling . . . to the point that people had to pull him away,” while the second involved Mesman “spitting at” the other complainant before being removed by staff members of the pub, the ruling states.
Both complaints were received by the elections office within the necessary 24 hour time period and corroborated by other witnesses.
Mesman admitted he had been involved in two disputes at Oliver’s that night and had raised his voice in the process.
“I think there’s some validity in the statements that can be made, but to be honest, it’s the other way around,” Mesman said, adding that he felt the two complainants deserved a share of the blame as well.
“If I had known better . . . I would have filed claims myself.”
Mesman said the first incident involved someone who initiated the conversation with him.
“She seemed to think it was okay to scream at me and tell me why my team is a joke and why I should be embarrassed,” Mesman said, claiming he immediately demanded an apology, before the situation progressed.
A similar incident occurred not long after when he became involved in a separate argument with someone else.
Mesman said he is currently appealing the violations.
A New RRRA has now received two serious violations and six in total, according to Valentin, who said the elections office decided to punish the slate by voiding the 50 per cent campaign refund of $100 to which it would otherwise be entitled.
The slate’s presidential candidate Sidney Otoboeze said he was unaware of the second serious violation, but denied the legitimacy of the harassment allegations.
“As far as I know, no member of my campaign team, and that includes the candidates, had anything to do with harassing anyone,” he said.
But unlike Mesman, Otoboeze claimed the situation at Oliver’s was completely unrelated to the RRRA election itself.
“Somehow because it’s an election time they found some way to relate that back to our team,” Otoboeze said.
“To come out and say one person harassed another person, that’s wrong,” he said, “Then to find a way to link something that happened in somewhere totally different back to the RRRA elections, that’s pretty steep.”
Otoboeze said he is hoping his slate doesn’t get disqualified in the final hours of the election like last time.
But Valentin noted that like the last election, it is up to the discretion of the elections office to disqualify slates based on their electoral violations.
“The last time, a team earned 11 violations before we disqualified them. Five of those 11 violations were serious,” Valentin said, adding that with two serious violations already, the elections office could consider disqualifying A New RRRA if it is awarded one more.
“Certainly we are cognizant of the fact that election day is happening right now,” he said. “We’re obviously very preoccupied with election day and if there are any more matters to adjudicate, we’ll be adjudicating them later.”
