1625 Hrs GMT
London
Sunday
19 September 2010
Permit me to comment in context on your piece about Tower Hamlets dated 17 September 2010.
I quote from your piece as follows:
“The complaint alleges that Mr Rahman’s campaign is in massive breach of Labour’s rules for the selection contest, which set a cap for each candidate on “all cash expenditure, resources and donations in kind” of £1 per Tower Hamlets Labour Party member – or £1,217.
It alleges that Mr Rahman received funding, or support in kind, far greater than £1,217. His election leaflets, unlike those of the other candidates, were full-colour, glossy, professionally printed – and were sent through the post to members, the complaint says. Mr Rahman also produced a number of other glossy, full-colour leaflets, including one announcing that he had been short-listed. He had a sophisticated, professionally-designed website. A fleet of cars was operated to take his supporters to the poll, it is alleged.”
It appears that you think that limitation on spending in the campaign albeit in an internal Labour Party one deserves to be respected.
It therefore follows that you would support the regulation – and due audit – of such expenditure by the personnel in the duly constitutionally and legally designated office in the bona fide organisation under whose ‘jurisdiction’ the particular campaign fell.
If this is the case then you should have been able to report on some step or steps being already underway in accordance with the supposed legal and constitutional audit and oversight duties.
The fact that you do not so report can be linked to the practical difficulty in obtaining the sort of outcome in the matter that the rest of your package in effect advocates
What are the immediate indicators of the operation of such difficulty in Tower Hamlets, evidentially speaking?
For a start Tower Hamlets electors at all relevant levels and on all appropriate occasions have suffered for years from poor compliance with the requirements of universally recognisable constitutionality and oversight and audit.
The post holders who ought to have done their job and actually investigated the many complaints that we as conscientious members of an electoral community have made over the years have also treated us with contempt.
I here refer to two recent evidential milestones, or road marks as it were.
The Metropolitan Police have declared that an investigation will not be continued into widely alleged vote fraud or electoral malpractices on and about 6 May 2010.
At least one of the characters also featured in your series about the Borough has stated in public that the decision by the Metropolitan Police is disappointing, to put it mildly.
The other is the refusal by the Returning Officer Kevan Collins who has let me know that he is not bothered about complaints with significant information about the excessive expenditure by supporters of certain side of the referendum that I and my fellow “NO” campaigners against a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets had filed with his office starting almost within the same working day when the ‘official announcement of the referendum result’ was made.
As the de facto coordinator of the “NO” campaign active under the banner of the Seelottee language word BHANGEELAAR! I have been in communications with both the Returning Officer AND the appropriate office in the High Court in London.
On the basis of the evidence of my contacts and representations so far [that is three months and nearly two weeks since 06 May 2010], I can see no realistic likelihood that the ‘process’ of constitutional compliance and audit of the expenditures of the canvassers and the campaigners will be implemented in relation to Tower Hamlets.
And if there is any conceptual pattern to be inferred in the events that I have summarised then that pattern is quite reliable as an indicator of things to come. In the foreseeable future
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a significant number of ordinary members of the then Labour Party in Tower Hamlets knew that certain irregularities in membership recruitment were regularly taking place! Some of the key patterns of those irregularities were even made known to the relevant journalists on the relevant titles.
NO real investigation was carried out about any of that. No journalist has ever explained why he or she showed no interest historically in the very same type of fraud that we are now witnessing or seeing being alleged.
The answer is not hard to guess. In a democracy [God help us!] where ‘getting the election’ or ‘getting the seat or the post’ is the main object, no Party bureaucrat or Returning Officer employed in a Party-ruled Council will want to upset the applecart!
This is why the people will lose out to abuses and abusers.
BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against a directly elected mayor in Tower Hamlets
17:05 Hrs
Sunday
19 September 2010
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