First there were three and then there were five and now there are seven contenders to be Labour's candidate for the East London borough's first executive mayoral contest to be held in October. That's been the position since last Friday evening following a further legal challenge that resulted in the former council leader Councillor Lutfur Rahman being allowed to take part despite having been rejected by the two different shortlisting panels that picked the three and the five.
The same challenge led to Councillor Sirajul Islam being included too. He was one of the three, but not one of the five. The other runners in this expanding field are health service manager Rosna Mortuza (who was one of the five but not one of the three), another former leader the academic Michael Keith (ditto), the borough's present leader Councillor Helal Abbas (ditto again), Councillor Shiria Khatun, who was one of the three and one of the five, and yet another former council leader John Biggs (ditto) who now represents the borough on the London Assembly.
I'm sure you've found that all perfectly clear. It is less clear who will win. When there were three, Biggs was considered the hot favourite. When there were five, Biggs was still reckoned to be favourite but likely to face a significant challenge from Abbas. Now there are seven Biggs could still be the front runner, but the picture looks more complex.
The selection will be made by the roughly 1,200 local party members. Some say that Rahman can count on at least 250 votes, including many from relatives, and might even benefit from being seen as the victim of media and Labour Party attacks. Others claim that talk of such a vast Rahman vote bank is an exaggeration.
I spoke to a majority of the candidates yesterday and asked each of them if any "stop Lutfur" movement was underway, involving deals whereby candidates thought to have only outside chances would withdraw in deference to another of the favourites and throw their support behind that person in return for future preferment - raw politics, in other words.
One said such overtures were indeed being made in an effort to help the prospects of Abbas, but that Rahman too was putting out feelers. Another view was that the scope for such arrangements was limited by the vivid matrix of deep personal hatreds at play among some of the more experienced players. All insisted they themselves were eschewing backstairs brokerage and simply focusing on maximising their own support. I blushed in the presence of such purity.
The selection will be made on 4 September, with the winner almost certain to take the larger prize in October, given Labour's dominance in the borough. That selection date has itself been moved on what at one stage seemed to be a daily basis. It worries one contender who said that as it falls on a Saturday when Muslim households may be busy preparing for Eid, some party members in them might not get round to casting their votes. But at least it leaves a full month for the lucky seven to campaign, with those who'd secured pledges when there were three and five eager to limit any erosion resulting from the widened choice range (and in Councillor Islam's case, perhaps, to get them back again).
Shiria Khatun was happy to go on the record in saying that those who have been on the shortlist ever since those distant days when there were just three names on it - that's hers and Biggs's - do have a slight advantage as a result, one she compares to being at the front of the queue outside a shop on the first day of a sale. She provided another nice analogy too. "It's all been a bit like a Carry On film," she sighed. "But there's nothing I can do except follow the example of Sid James and just carry on anyway."
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Tower Hamlets: lucky seven
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What about that dog that nearly won Britain's Got Talent? Surely any short-list is lacking without him/her.
The dog would plant more trees, probably reduce traffic congestion and accidents involving pets and kids, and undoubtedly be less idiotic than Boris.
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Why does Tower Hamlets need its own mayor?
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Tower Hamlets is a haven of electoral fraud. That is a fact.
The local plebiscite on May 4th to determine whether the borough should be governed by a directly elected Executive Mayor should be viewed with that in mind. The vote in clear favour of a executive mayor was surprising - and given the history - a suspicious result.
Given that ALL the political parties in the borough except Respect (who saw their vote collapse) were campaigning for a "No" vote in this referendum it seems bizarre that the electorate apparently voted in favour of the proposal for an executive mayor. I know of no one who voted in favour of this change.
And now our Bangladeshi neighbours are falling over themselves, desperate, to be the candidate. Whoever is the Labour Candidate is likely to win. What a lot of people do not understand is that the Mayor of Tower Hamlets carries MORE weight in Bangladesh (and money, bribes, favours, etc) than it does in Tower Hamlets itself.
Bangladesh is the most corrupt country in the world where elections are consistently marred by violence and fraud. We would be very naive to presume things change very much after one generation here.
We need the central government to step in and institute local rules for this area. We need external monitoring of all elections. We need a local ban on postal and proxy votes. Many of us are very concerned about the impact an autocratic "presidential" Mayor will bring and suspect community relations and local politics will be changed very much for the worse because of it.
Help us Obi Wan Kenobi. You're our only hope...
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Does anyone have any confidence in this election? Tower Hamlets is a rotten borough. Its politics are a blot on the good name of London. This Labour selection (which, in practice, may as well be the actual mayoral election) would disgrace a banana republic.
I can't even begin to imagine the election fraud which will take place in the election proper, given the dubiously dismissive attitude towards democracy which many of the candidates seem to have displayed during the selection process.
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Just to throw some cold water on all this smoke-without-a-fire, the police did just end their investigation into allegations of electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets because "no offences were disclosed". (http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED29%20Jul%202010%2011%3A53%3A04%3A437)
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This is an absolute joke.
Only a naive moron could think this is a good move for Tower Hamlets.
As JamesShoreditch says, the Bangladeshi's in Tower Hamlets are massively active in local politics, and hugely corrupt.
These lads were even hanging around outside the polling stations shoving their crap in everyone's faces before they went to vote, in a vaguely harassing manner.
Not a big deal, but not a million miles away from what you'd expect in some 3rd world spot.
It's just a disaster waiting to happen, you can't let the Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets have this weird kind of seperate governance.
These guys do fuck all to try and integratre, but the total lack of control awarded to the east is legitimised by these "it's always been a melting pot" fantasies, a kind of benign idealism that's totally useless in the real world.
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