1820 [1655] Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 November 2012. UPDATER diagnostics as part of the KHOODEELAAR! Manifesto for the Borough of Tower Hamlets. The © Muhammad Haque Daily Ethical Commentary.

1820 [1655] Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 November 2012. UPDATER diagnostics as part of the KHOODEELAAR! Manifesto for the Borough of Tower Hamlets.

1820 [1655] Hrs GMT London Wednesday 28 November 2012. UPDATER diagnostics as part of the KHOODEELAAR! Manifesto for the Borough of Tower Hamlets. 

The © Muhammad Haque Daily Ethical Commentary. Tower Hamlets Borough Council is mired in allegations after allegations while the official Opposition on the Council is trailing behind. So who is holding the Council to account for the communities in the Borough? And what will it take for the official Opposition Councillors to start making their mark as the voices of the people who have elected them? 

I will be answering these questions in the course of this evening.

Before examining the allegations, let me say that when I said in January 2010 that the then bid to lumber Tower Hamlets Borough Council with an “elected executive mayor” was a very wrong move, I could foresee some of the things that are being referred to by the “very small number of people” who have gone on record as being the critics of Lutfur Rahman, the “elected executive mayor” in Tower Hamlets.

These people have been, without any contradiction, entirely non-Bangladeshi.

And this has ADDED to the already highly charged race and ethnicity and faith-related divide that has allowed the alleged wrongs or wrongdoing or improper doings to be continued!

This is a key conundrum.

And this cannot be understood let alone dealt with without referring to the central flaw that racist empire revivalist thinking is based on.

Because the “critics” have been non-Bangladeshi and because they have been seeking to paint Lutfur Rahman as a “Muslim” who is “backed” by “fundamentalist” “extremist” Muslims, Lutfur can rely on THESE critics and show them to his “Muslim” “backers” who have included ordinary non-partisan Muslims, as in the run up to the October 2010 [first] poll for “directly elected mayor” that he, Lutfur, is a victim of racist and anti-Muslim propagandists.

Perhaps the most open statement in defiance of these critics was made by Lutfur Rahman [or by his “strategic advisers”] when they confirmed that the “Lutfur Council” was going to spend a few £millions in funding “faith groups”.

To everyone except a most recent arrival from planet Mars, it is clear that these “faith groups” are overwhelmingly “Muslim faith” groups!

And these groups’ “leaders” are among the most known members in the population in Tower Hamlets who can be counted reliably as having provided support to Lufur Rahman in the past two years.

So Lutfur’s apparent critics are in effect aiding and abetting the “very wrongs” that they say he is responsible for as the “executive Mayor in post” at the “decision-making” top of an administration that has been allegedly doing the allegedly wrongful things and the abuses of the “power and the money” that should have been dedicated to serving the needs of the ordinary people of all backgrounds in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

And the official Opposition made up of the biggest group of elected councillors outside of the “cabinet” that Lutfur Rahman has been found lacking!

As I have chronicled and diagnosed before, they have sought to use an external party who turns out to be probably the most dedicated promoter of the Conservative Group Councillor Peter Golds.

And therein is found the second layer of the conundrum: 

What are the official Opposition Councillors to do?

They cannot really mount let alone sustain a democratic and accountable attack on the “Lutfur Rahman” administration on Tower Hamlets Council without appearing half-hearted and half-serious.

Why so?

Because some of their main “ammunition” “against” Lutfur has come from or been laundered in the non-Bangladeshi “media” via “sources very close to or propaganda-wise  very much in bed with” the very “Conservative Group Councillor Peter Golds” about whom they are OTHERWISE not at all pleased!!!

So we enter the third layer of the conundrum:

Can the official Opposition Councillors on Tower Hamlets Council hack it?

The evidence of their activities so far says: NOT!

They would like to say that they are doing it.

But their record is not at all supporting of any such claim.

This is also linked with the fact that the “Conservative Group Councillor Peter Golds”  is not without a grand strategy of his own.

He is playing three or four hands at the same time.

He is in part-time bed with Lutfur Rahman, as is evident in the relevant contextual contents of the draft proposals and report published by the English local Government Boundary Commission.

Peter Golds is also in  part-time bed [as I have shown above] with the official opposition councillors, whose ‘thanks’ he can deserve – whether he gets it is another matter altogether- for the “help” his chum/s and propaganda colleague/s via “Fleet Street”  are lending to them.

The last “full Council” meeting held on 19 September 2012 showed that the extremely rushed “Motion” against the expenses claims by Gulam Robbani, a key Lutfur Rahman aide and helper, was fronted by Abbas Uddin Helal, from the Opposition Labou councillors group.

There could have been MANY OTHER items that the Opposition Labour councillors group could have raised against the Lutfur Rahman administration. But they focussed on the Gulam Robbani expenses claims item.

Why?

By doing so, they felt “secure” and certain of “victory” on the Motion.

Why?

Because the allegations had been published already by Peter Golds’ chum Ted Jeory!

And this aspect of the conundrum makes the Opposition councillors weak and also very dependent on the Conservative councillors strategy!

Unless there emerges a game-changer event soon – and I detect none on the horizon as at the time of writing THIS at 1755 Hrs GMT on Wednesday 28 November 2012, less than two hours before the latest formal “full Council” is due to be staged – I cannot see the Official Opposition Councillors on Tower Hamlets Council holding Lutfur Rahman to account on their own or for any sustained period.

On the evidence that is before me this evening, Lutfur Rahman will be unlikely to lose any election for the same post that may happen in the foreseeable future.

This is not necessarily going to do good to the people in Tower Hamlets. But the two things are currently unrelated.

The reason why the two things are unrelated is to be found in the detachment from the reality f ordinary life of ordinary people from all walks of life in Tower Hamlets that the official opposition councillors continue to show!

I will examine this detachment in the future parts of this continuing exclusive  UPDATER Commentary.

They, the official Opposition councillors on Tower Hamlets Council,  are following “media”  and propaganda operatives via the “media”; they are NOT leading the media!

Which brings us to the fifth layer of the conundrum: the role of “Channel S” and assorted other “ethnicity, faith and nationality-origins-linked” “satellite TV channels”  that are broadcast via Rupert Murdoch’s BSKYB satellite operations, claiming to be serving the objectively defined impartial information needs of the UK Bangladeshi community!

In private, most of the “official Opposition” councillors on Tower Hamlets Council share the evidentially justifier view that “Channel S” and the other “Channels” are broadcasting packs and packs of propaganda that are manufactured to create and then repeat an image that “Lutfur Rahman is the man who is doing things”!

In fact, these same Opposition Councillors and Opposition activists” [within quotes!] are not only keen but VERY KEEN to appear on anything that these “satellite” “TV” channels offer to them. On practically any subject under their very limited “broadcasting view”!

And thereby we enter the sixth layer of the conundrum about the moribund Tower Hamlets Council that is letting the people of the borough down daily by wasting time, wasting resource and by wasting and abusing the otherwise mostly tenable democratic mandate that the voters gave the last time they cast their votes genuinely for an elected, accountable Council for Tower Hamlets!