1920 Hrs GMT
London
Friday
24 September 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
Following is our brief [first] response to today's online report as carried by the LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHRONICLE [they abbreviate the name to ‘LGC’] about Tower Hamlets 'mayor candidates'.
Our response addresses the key inaccuracies and omissions by the LGC:
"We [added description here, BHANGEELAAR! The campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets] write to correct some of the many inaccuracies and omissions in your report about Tower Hamlets.
We have been campaigning against an elected mayor system.
So our response to your report is independent of all the candidates and parties and factions and cliques.
We are OPPOSING the mayoral system.
We are doing so on constitutional, ethical, legal and above all on democracy grounds.
We argue that having an elected mayor will make things worse for the ordinary people of Tower Hamlets.
We are calling for the scrapping of the move to fill that post in October.
We are preparing the necessary steps to mount constitutional law challenges including some through the existing and relevant courts, tribunals and like forums within the constitutional framework concerned.
Your report today starts as follows:
“A controversial former Tower Hamlets LBC leader is to stand as an independent in next month’s race to select the borough’s first elected mayor, the final nominations have revealed.”
Quite apart from the rather contradictory elements of ‘select the first elected mayor’ [which of course should read to elect the first mayor to the newly created post’] you leave out the crucial facts about the serious problems involved in the so-called final list of runners. It is curious that you concentrate as much as you do on the position of George Galloway.
You also leave out the undeniable fact that it was those challenges that produced the ‘final’ ‘short list’ which included Abbas Uddin ‘Helal’ who was then able to appear on the final ballot paper for the Party members in Tower Hamlets to vote on at the selection process for the Labour Party’s ‘mayor candidate’ held on Saturday 4 September 2010.
If you wanted your readers and visitors to know the full key facts you would have included those.
And you would have also included the fact, even more important than all of the above, that the legitimacy of the conduct of the referendum dated 6 May 2010 by the ‘Returning Officer’ has been questioned, challenged and that a campaign is afoot to have the result of that referendum declared null and void for several legal and constitutional reasons one of which being serious breaches of the rules and abuse of procedure.
[To be continued]
__________
"
A controversial former Tower Hamlets LBC leader is to stand as an independent in next month’s race to select the borough’s first elected mayor, the final nominations have revealed.
Earlier this week, Lutfur Rahman (Lab) was dropped as his party’s candidate in the race by the party’s National Executive Committee following allegations about his conduct and the eligility to vote of some of his bakers for the pary’s nomination.
The move raised the potentail that former Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway could stand for borough mayor, even though his Respect party had pledged its support to Cllr Rahman.
But today’s confirmed nominations show that Mr Galloway will not stand as a candidate in the October 21 vote, while Cllr Rahman is listed as standing as an independent against current Tower Hamets leader Helal Uddin Abbas (Lab).
Local reports indicated that the Respect party was maintaining its support for Cllr Rahman, who was replaced by Cllr Abbas as leader in May.
Cllr Rahman was most recently surrounded by controversy over the shock departure of Tower Hamlets chief executive Martin Smith last year.
Mr Smith is understood to have received a severance package worth hundreds of thousands of pounds following his dismissal from post.
He is currently chief executive at Ealing LBC.
Readers' comments (1)
*
Muhammad Haque | 24-Sep-2010 7:45 pm
We [BHANGEELAAR! The campaign against an elected mayor in Tower Hamlets] write to correct some of the many inaccuracies and omissions in your report about Tower Hamlets.
We have been campaigning against an elected mayor system.
So our response to your report is independent of all the candidates and parties and factions and cliques.
We are OPPOSING the mayoral system.
We are doing so on constitutional, ethical, legal and above all on democracy grounds.
We argue that having an elected mayor will make things worse for the ordinary people of Tower Hamlets.
We are calling for the scrapping of the move to fill that post in October.
We are preparing the necessary steps to mount constitutional law challenges including some through the existing and relevant courts, tribunals and like forums within the constitutional framework concerned.
Your report today starts as follows:
“A controversial former Tower Hamlets LBC leader is to stand as an independent in next month’s race to select the borough’s first elected mayor, the final nominations have revealed.”
Quite apart from the rather contradictory elements of ‘select the first elected mayor’ [which of course should read to elect the first mayor to the newly created post’] you leave out the crucial facts about the serious problems involved in the so-called final list of runners. It is curious that you concentrate as much as you do on the position of George Galloway.
You also leave out the undeniable fact that it was those challenges that produced the ‘final’ ‘short list’ which included Abbas Uddin ‘Helal’ who was then able to appear on the final ballot paper for the Party members in Tower Hamlets to vote on at the selection process for the Labour Party’s ‘mayor candidate’ held on Saturday 4 September 2010. If you a wanted your readers and visitors to know the full key facts you would have included those.
And you would have also included the fact, even more important than all of the above, that the legitimacy of the conduct of the referendum dated 6 May 2010 by the ‘Returning Officer’ has been questioned, challenged and that a campaign is afoot to have the result of that referendum declared null and void for several legal and constitutional reasons one of which being serious breaches of the rules and abuse of procedure.
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