VOTE-RIGGING, VOTER INTIMIDATION --- The first concerns allegations of vote-rigging in London borough of Tower Hamlets, where scandal-wracked, Islamist-linked mayor Lutfur Rahman has just won a second term as mayor........ Then theres the similarly troubling case of Operation Trojan Horse - the campaign to infiltrate a number of state schools in Birmingham, oust non-Muslim teachers, hijack the curriculum, segregate boys from girls and create a corner of the English Midlands that is forever Islamabad. Fraud, he says, is widespread - and known by the authorities to be widespread: There are two reasons for this – forgery and coercion. The first has now been mitigated by insisting on postal voters giving a signature and a date of birth (in Tower Hamlets this time, no fewer than 10 per cent of the postal votes returned were rejected because of discrepancies in this area). The second flourishes, particularly in minority ethnic communities, where leaders can exploit clan or family ties to “harvest” votes from their juniors and from women. So why is so little being done about it? One answer is that the very institutions charged with preventing this kind of behaviour have been turning a deliberate blind eye to it. ....... But its not just the Electoral Commission which is to blame. So too are those police - presumably obeying orders from on high - stood by and watched as the thoroughly illegal voter intimidation took place in Tower Hamlets. So too are the local councillors in Labour-controlled Birmingham. So too is the coalition government, which is said to have been warned four years ago that Operation Trojan Horse was taking place. So too are the three main political parties, all of whom have agreed that dealing with postal-vote is not priority. And it barely needs spelling out why. Everyone in authority is so afraid of being accused of being racist or Islamophobic that they have found it easier to sweep the issue under the carpet than confront it. But the problem isnt going to go away. In fact - until someone, somewhere finds the courage to deal with it - its bound to get an awful lot worse.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 00:45:54 +0000