The president-elect of the Oxford Union has lost a vote of no confidence sparked by his celebration of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but is refusing to accept the results of the vote, claiming that they have been “tampered” with.
George Abaraonye, the 20-year-old Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) student who was elected to serve as the next head of the once prestigious debating society, lost a no-confidence vote over the weekend, with 1,228 members voting to remove him compared to 501 who backed him to remain. The margin was sufficient to hit the two-thirds majority required by Union rules to oust the president.
The vote was prompted after his candidacy was thrown into question by hundreds of life members in the wake of Abaraonye’s texts being leaked last month celebrating the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, including: “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s fucking go.” Abaraonye also wrote on Instagram: “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.”
While Abaraonye personally called the confidence vote, apparently in a bid to shore up his own position, he now claims that the results were “compromised”. He and his proxies have criticised the process to allow members of the society — many of whom are Oxford alums worldwide — to vote by proxy rather than in person, and is therefore refusing to accept the results.
In a statement to Oxford’s Cherewell student newspaper, a spokesman for the president-elect accused the returning officer who conducted the vote of having “shared around the email account collecting proxy votes” and thus the outcome may have been “tampered with”.
“George Abaraonye is and remains the President-Elect. George is proud and thankful to have the support of well in excess of a majority of students at Oxford, who voted to have a safe election and resist attempts to subvert democracy,” the statement added.
Further controversy surrounding Saturday’s vote erupted after the announcement of the results were delayed, with suggestions that Abaraonye’s allies had engaged in “obstruction, intimidation, and unwarranted hostility” against the returning officer. Abaraonye’s team denied the allegations on Tuesday, saying: “We equivocally deny that any representative appointed by George engaged in intimating or disruptive behaviour.”
Abaraonye, who was elected to lead the Oxford Union in June, has attempted to cast himself as a cancel culture martyr, claiming ahead of the no-confidence vote that it represented an “opportunity to affirm Free Speech, to stand against the racism of the Far Right, and to stand up for the principles the Union has championed for 200 years.”
The 20-year-old student, who personally debated Charlie Kirk at the dispatch box earlier this year, previously claimed that he was the victim of “selective outrage” and argued that Kirk’s positions should have been the focus rather than his celebration of Kirk’s assassination.
“My words were no less insensitive than his – arguably less so; the difference is that I had the humility to recognise when I strayed from my core values, and I addressed it immediately upon reflection,” he said.
Abaraonye has also faced criticism for appearing to endorse political violence during an Oxford Union debate. Despite representing the side ostensibly opposed to political violence, Abaraonye said that he “wholeheartedly” agreed with the position that there are times when “there is simply nothing else that can be required except for violent retaliation.”
“Some institutions are too broken, too oppressive to be reformed, like cancers of our society, and they must, and they should be taken down by any means necessary,” he proclaimed.
Abaraonye’s apparent radical politics were further displayed with another batch of leaked text messages this week, in which, according to the New York Post, he is reported to have admitted that he only ran to become Oxford Union president because he hated the institution.
He also reportedly revealed that he abstains from engaging with any “white establishments” and was of the belief that Queen Elizabeth II had been responsible for “genocide”.
The scandal over Abaraonye’s celebration of Kirk’s murder has already had significant ramifications for the Oxford Union, with The Telegraph reporting that dozens of planned speakers pulling out of scheduled events and major donations have been put on hold, threatening to throw the debating society into a full-blown “financial crisis”.
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