Russian Democracy: Griffin Style

Now where have they hidden that vodka?

Nick Griffin has recently returned from Moscow following an invitation for him to be an independent elections advisor in last week’s Russian parliamentary elections.

Griffin obviously couldn’t believe his luck. Known to like the food and drink, Griffin was in hog heaven with copious amounts of food and free flowing vodka along with dancing Cossacks being the order of the day.

Perhaps it was the vodka or his own sense of self importance that clouded Griffin’s judgement when it came to the actual reason he was in Russia, to give an impartial view of the Russian election. Or maybe Moscow just wanted a few gullible idiots to churn out their version of events on state television?

The election has been widely condemned as being loaded in favour of the ruling “United Russia” party, with numerous accounts of vote rigging, harassment and state interference. Yet Nick Griffin declared that there were “A handful of small technical failings in a few polling stations that didn't affect the validity of the election”.

Posting on Twitter he also said that “UK Electoral Commission could learn a lot from the Russian set up to monitor & improve elections.”

Really? Do we want the Russian system that has seen opposition leaders such as the veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister turned vocal government opponent rounded up and detained? The same Russian system that banned a number of political parties from even standing in the elections? The same system that arrested two well known anti corruption bloggers and placed them in jail?

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton said “Reports of procedural violations are a serious concern". She also highlighted the "lack of media impartiality, a lack of separation between party and state, and the harassments of independent monitoring attempts".

A report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe details alleged attempts to stuff ballot boxes, manipulate voter lists and harass election monitors. The group, which monitors and promotes democracy and human rights in Europe, cited the lack of an independent body running the election or impartial news media.

Yet Griffin wrote “Eye opening being in a country that has set up a democratic system recently and with intention of being honest & transparent. UK elections are a bent farce by comparison.”

The election results triggered two days of protests in Moscow and St Petersburg with several thousand protestors taking to the streets. Russian police are thought to have arrested hundreds of the protestors as anger over allegations of official corruption and economic stagnation started to boil over.

United Russia, the party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remains the largest party, albeit with a smaller majority and his reputation tarnished.

Is this the sort of democracy Nick Griffin and the BNP would like in this country?

Of course it is.

Hope not hate

BNP row: Village hall warned over Nick Griffin speech

A Sussex council has threatened to cancel a village hall's rate subsidy if it hosts a speech by British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin.

Mr Griffin is due to speak at a meeting at Baldslow Memorial Hall in St Leonards on Sunday. Hastings Borough Council said it was "contrary to the interests of the community" and councillors voted to withdraw the hall's rate relief. The BNP has accused the authority of blocking free speech.

Leader of the labour run council, Jeremy Birch, said: "I can't agree that Hastings people should be subsidising a charity that's prepared to provide a platform to someone who is so completely opposed to the community harmony philosophy of this local authority."

The authority has written to the people who run the hall in St Leonards telling them they will have to pay back £376 they received as a charity in rate relief if Mr Griffin's speech goes ahead. It has also written to the charity commission to check whether their guidelines allow the hall to host the meeting.

The people who run Baldslow Memorial Hall have declined to comment on the issue.

Carlos Cortiglia, of the BNP, said the council's actions were an attack on democracy. He added: "It's a natural right that we all have, whatever our ideas we all have to be heard and for other people to hear what we think. If they agree they will support us if they don't agree they will not support us."

Free speech campaigner Padraig Reidy also criticised Hastings Borough Council. He said: "This move is very clearly politically motivated and while the BNP is an organisation that has very few supporters in this country they do still have the right to free expression and the council should not be interfering with that right."

BBC

Getting the Excuses in Early

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Iliacus. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Those of us who follow the electoral efforts of the BNP know one thing is certain. The BNP never loses an election. No, elections are never lost - they are stolen by the LibLabCon conspiracy! (With the help of ZOG, world jewry, Lancaster Unity, and possibly shape-shifting lizards!)

With the landmark Euro elections only hours away they are quickly getting their excuses into the public domain in case the great breakthrough, the silent revolution, proves elusive. Again.

In the past they have aimed primarily at the failings of the relaxed postal voting system. There is some anecdotal evidence that the operation of the rules has been tightened up this year, with a higher proportion of ballots submitted being rejected. You might expect the BNP to welcome this robust defence of our democratic process - but no, they are of course convinced that it is nothing to do with protecting the security of the ballot. It's bent returning officers deliberately rejecting BNP ballots!

There is just one problem with this interpretation, which will be very obvious to anyone who has ever attended the processing of postal ballots. The acceptance (or rejection) of postal ballots takes place before the opening of the envelopes containing the actual ballot paper. So it would be impossible for any Returning Officer to single out BNP-supporting postal votes for rejection!

But this is merely a byway before we consider the BNP's new conspiracy theory. This is how the 2009 ballot will be rigged (copyright BNP 2009). Presiding Officers (the staff at the actual polling stations) will do the dirty deed. According to the BNP's own official website these people are "town hall bureaucrats who 'work' in parasite jobs created by the Labour government in order to provide their own people with well-paid easy lives at taxpayers' expense" (makes you wonder who on earth manned all those polling stations before 1997!). And at 9.30 on Thursday evening they will start tearing off dozens of ballot papers, cross off a corresponding number of names at random from the electoral register, insert votes in the appropriate (Labour) box and "stuff" the ballot box.

In theory it could be done (on a small scale). In reality this is a very serious, and deeply offensive, slur against local government staff across the nation. Because the idea that presiding officers would seek to act in this way flies in the face of sense, and any knowledge of their ethical standards. Because of the risks of crossing off someone who is dead, or away on holiday, or working away - all of which might then come to light. Because a sudden spike in turnout in a particular area would look suspicious. Because for such practice to be carried out to a degree which could affect the out-turn across an entire region would require a conspiracy on a massive and unsustainable scale.

In 2004 if Labour had somehow persuaded the Presiding Officers in 1,000 polling stations in the North West (that's a minimum of 2,000 corrupt staff) to stuff 150 extra ballot papers into each of those boxes it would have represented 150,000 fraudulent votes - over a quarter of their entire regional vote! And what impact would removing those 'fraudulent' votes have had on the result? None whatsoever! Labour would still have secured three MEPs in the region, and the BNP zero.

In other words - it's typical BNP nonsense, which is surely designed to provide the get-out clause if their performance once again fails to meet their aspirations.

NUS: Students have a right and responsibility to vote

In the run-up to the elections held across the UK tomorrow, I have been campaigning on the street and on the doorstep to ensure that the votes of students are heard at the polls, says Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students.

Young people and students have a major part to play in these local elections, in spite of those who would curtail their democratic rights.

We heard comments this week from a Liverpool councillor who suggested that students, because they only spend "a bit of time" in Liverpool, should not be allowed a vote in the local elections.

Students walk along the same streets, use the same public transport, and suffer the same exposure to crime as other local people. Many students live and work in the vicinity of their university, and are involved in their local communities through voluntary work and activism. Surely they, just as much as any other resident, are entitled to a say in their local area?

At a time when we should be engaging students in the political process rather than seeking to exclude them, these comments set an awful example. Local politicians' time would surely be better spent urging students to oppose the British National Party's electoral campaign in Liverpool.

The BNP are fielding 750 candidates across the Scottish parliamentary elections, Welsh assembly, English and Scottish local elections. The BNP already hold 49 local council seats in England, and its share of the vote has increased more than 75-fold in the last six years.

This party's past successes have depended on voter apathy, perceived failures in improving local services, poverty, social housing and unemployment. Yet history shows how dangerous it is to underestimate the ability of far-right candidates to prey upon these fears and to blame genuine concerns on immigration and race.

Last week, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau with the Holocaust Education Trust. Just 60 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camps, we risk forgetting the lessons learnt so painfully by so many.

Compared with the scale of that horror it is important to keep a sense of perspective about our local elections, and yet fascism in the 1930s began with small steps.

This week, students along with many other people in the UK will have the chance to make a difference in the local elections and to oppose the extreme right. We can, and we must, use our democratic voice to stop the BNP from poisoning our society.

Guardian

BNP's Griffin speaks

Click on image for full size
A pdf file of the poster (32k) can be downloaded from here.

BNP plans poll push

Far-right party the BNP launched its biggest election assault on Merseyside yesterday, fielding 20 candidates for the May vote. In Liverpool, they have submitted nine nominations – eight more than last year – including one in Norris Green, where they came in second in 2006.

In Sefton, five BNP candidates are standing, while Knowsley has two and St Helens four. None is being put up in Wirral.

Anti-racism campaigners last night branded the party “modern- day fascists” and urged people to vote against them on May 3. Alec McFadden said: “Even in Mosley’s era, there weren’t as many candidates as this. The views they are peddling are sickening and we are doing everything we can to stop them. In the run-up to Capital of Culture, it is a real slap in the face to the city that so many candidates have been put forward for this party.”

The BNP yesterday set out its pledges for the region if it was elected, which included stopping schools serving Halal meat and preventing mosques from being built. Its spokesman also explained the party believed Chinese people were “OK because they are hard-working” and “were not in the nefarious activities some ethnic groups are”.

Mr McFadden said “What is frightening is that they must have had 108 people backing them to get to this stage, as each nomination needs 12 signatures. The BNP has been targeting areas of deprivation and poverty across the city, picking places with problems and a lack of resources. We are urging candidates for parties that know they have got no hope of winning a seat to withdraw to ensure that they don’t split the vote in wards where the BNP is standing.

“We have also got 35,000 leaflets to send out to across the city informing people about the BNP. I would urge everyone to make sure they are registered to vote and to get out there on polling day.”

Cllr Steve Radford, Liberal group leader, said: “The BNP would have me gassed on three counts – I’m gay, I’m a Liberal and I’m a Methodist. But I would defend to the hilt their right to stand for election in a democracy and I look forward to beating them at the ballot boxes.”

icLiverpool