1030 GMT
London
Tuesday
05 January 2010
By © Muhammad Haque
Growing trend in the community against the dangers of having an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets. But there is yet no campaign to reflect the trend!
Why there is no campaign yet, became clear at a meeting held yesterday in the Greatorex Street, off Hanbury Street off Brick Lane.
Although held as a ‘News Conference’, the event was manned by a number of current members of the Tower Hamlets Council. And it featured a few former councillors.
There were two documents distributed at the event. But they did not read anything like the contents of a campaign against having an elected mayor. They were like the product of a stale committee made up of clerks yielding words under the force of orders from their bosses. Somewhere in the deep depth of a bureaucracy unseen by and definitely unaccountable to the people.
Yet the words put on the wall behind the table used as the de facto platform declared ‘No” to an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets.
Most of the speeches, made by persons called with elaborate praise by the chair of the do, the ex-councillor Ala Uddin, were claimed to be arguments against having an elected mayor but lacked concrete and more worryingly, up-to-date substance on which to base a sustained campaign against the borough being lumbered with an elected mayor.
The ‘platform’ was making contradictory statements. Some were plainly inaccurate.
Here are two for instance:
One: We are NOT saying having an elected mayor is wrong.
Two: Good things can happened UNDER a mayor, as we have seen under Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone.
If that event was any guide, those who may be claiming to be against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets have a lot of work to do.
If they fail to do that then they will – wittingly or unwittingly – contribute to the eventuality that they said they were trying to prevent.
Tower Hamlets may end up with a mayor elected to office by default!
The challenge for all who genuinely recognise the dangers of an elected mayor is to make sure that there is credible and sustainable difference between what they represent politically to and in the community and those who are now going about calling for an elected mayor in the borough.
[To be continued]
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
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