A petition to impeach Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) President László Molnárfi has garnered over 60 signatures since being launched yesterday.
The organisers of the petition, Seán Thim and Colin Harper, who are both class representatives in TCDSU, point to a “concern that democratic methods of accountability within TCDSU are being intentionally subverted” by Molnárfi.
It comes after Molnárfi and a group of his supporters, including president-elect Jenny Maguire, staged a walkout to prevent a motion of censure against the president from being voted on at Council on Tuesday evening.
“This violates the democratic process of the union, and disrupts basic means of accountability within the union”, organisers of the petition said.
“This coordinated act was an inappropriate method of barring representatives from voicing the concerns of the students they represent.”
The motion of censure was brought to Council after the Oversight Commission (OC) published a report on his breaches of the TCDSU constitution.
These breaches include his organisation of an explicitly anti-government voter-registration drive calling on students to “evict this government”, and his use of the official TCDSU president X/Twitter account to campaign for an amendment the TCDSU constitution, which precludes the union from acting in accordance with particular “political, racial or religious ideology”, amongst other things.
“This petition for an Officer Impeachment Referendum is the final option left to those who want to hold the president to any levels of accountability”, they continued.
A referendum to impeach a TCDSU sabbatical officer must garner over 500 signatures from current Trinity students, which all must then be verified by the Electoral Commission (EC).
If successful, the EC is mandated to call a referendum to remove the president, which must happen within five weeks but no sooner than two weeks after verification.
A simple majority is required for the referendum to pass.
