0910 Hrs GMT
London
Wednesday
06 October 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
BHANGEELAAR! The CAMPAIGN AGAINST A DIRECTLY ELECTED MAYOR IN TOWER HAMLETS has responded to the reported ‘stance’ by Ken Livingstone on the ‘East London Advertiser’ web site. As at the time of writing this updater, that web site has not shown our comment even though it had been duly posted on their comment section.
Here is our response in full.
Your latest report on the ‘directly elected’ ‘mayor’ thing in the name of the people of Tower Hamlets again shows the serious problems that surround the move to downgrade the already inadequate level of accountability by the Local Council. We say again: "scrap the tainted ballot", as you yourselves have eventually said in your editorial comment. In doing so, we refer to the role of Mr Ken Livingstone.
You attribute words to Mr Livingstone, which we think warrant scrutiny. Here we deal with one sentence that you carry in your longer report.
“A united Tower Hamlets ought to be the objective of everyone – we should not allow how Labour’s NEC has handled this to divert us from this objective.”
Questions that arise from Mr Livingstone's wise words [!] include:
1. Who will unite Tower Hamlets when there are so many allegations being made by and to the Labour Party NEC about so many individuals involved in various careers they have made in the name of the Borough’s population and yet the Labour Party NEC in the current context has not started any investigation into those allegations. Does that mean that people in Tower Hamlets should have confidence in the Labour Party NEC, whoever they may be?
2. Does Mr Livingstone still believe that he was right to state on 6 February 2010 [as reported online by the ‘East London Advertiser’ on 9 February 2010] that a directly elected mayor was a good thing for our Borough as opposed to the establishment of a long overdue democratically rigorous accountability by the elected councillors and their decision-making personnel?
3. Why has Mr Livingstone not used his new position as an elected NEC member of the Labour Party to publish the full account of what the NEC did as it made a decision about all the people in Tower Hamlets at the relevant meeting in September? Is there a legal barrier to Mr Livingstone's doing so? If there is why isn’t he making THAT FACT [if not the extensive details] public?
4. As Mr Livingstone has been associated with successions of place-holders – as different from ordinary people including independent campaigning groups – in Tower Hamlets over the past at least 27 years, has he not come across a constant factor about the role played here by a certain Political party and its bureaucracy that has been found, repeatedly, to have behaved against all known norms of universal accountability, audit and answerability to the people on the ground? If he has, what has he done about that?
5. At the Brady Centre [Hanbury Street, off Brick Lane, London E1] ‘launch of the YES for mayor’ campaign on 6 February 2010 – which he starred at [as reported by the ‘East London Advertiser’ describing Mr Livingstone as one of the ‘heavy guns’] Mr Livingstone went on the record as having condemned Tower Hamlets council for a whole host of problems which he said would be got rid of by having directly elected mayor. Does he agree with us that he got that analysis wrong in that the solution he was prescribing was ill-founded and not established on verifiable evidence and that it was bound to make matters worse as they already have done, even going by his own words as you report them now?
1000 Hrs Wednesday 06 October 2010
BHANGEELAAR! The CAMPAIGN AGAINST A DIRECTLY ELECTED MAYOR IN TOWER HAMLETS
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