Once more Tower Hamlets is in the news for the wrong reasons. Once more that reason is Lutfur Rahman.
The best analysis of the news that Lutfur Rahman has declared his Mayoral candidacy was that of Ted Jeory. This is what Ted said:
Sums it all up. In three letters.
Moley might need more than three. Here’s 38 for starters.
How is it acceptable for any community to allow any politician who brought shame on the borough he was supposed to serve to once more stand for the very office which he used to pervert the democratic process?
In his judgement Justice Mawry gave this description of Lutfur Rahman:
296 Faced with a straight question, he proved himself almost pathologically incapable of giving a straight answer
So who thinks this man should be given control of our borough once more? Honest people? People who wish to serve? Or dishonest people who wish to yet again use Tower Hamlets for their own personal ambitions?
Let us put aside the fact that Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of voting fraud, making false statements against rivals, bribery, treating (providing free food and drink) and the undue use of spiritual influence.
Instead look at who Rahman damaged the most.
Justice Mawry wrote this in his judgement at the end of the Electoral Petition.
“682 The real losers in this case are the citizens of Tower Hamlets and, in particular, the Bangladeshi community. Their natural and laudable sense of solidarity has been cynically perverted into a sense of isolation and victimhood, and their devotion to their religion has been manipulated – all for the aggrandisement of Mr Rahman. The result has been to alienate them from the other communities in the Borough and to create resentment in those other communities. Mr Rahman and Mr Choudhury, as has been seen, spent a great deal of time accusing their opponents, especially Mr Biggs, of ‘dividing the community’ but, if anyone was ‘dividing the community’, it was they.”
Source: Mawry Judgement BBC
A vote for Lutfur Rahman to be Mayor or any Aspire Party candidate to be a ward councillor is a vote to pull Tower Hamlets back into the sewer of political corruption that it is still trying to emerge from.
It is that simple.
Internet Links
- Mawry Judgement BBC
