Edinburgh Sucks! | How to fix an election

Capacity Building Project

How to fix an election

By The Basa ⋅ April 20, 2006 ⋅

1. Appoint one of your employees as the returning officer.
2. Refuse to send out nomination papers.
3. Fix the polling station.
4. Keep secret information about the counts.

Roll on a few weeks to the next community council meeting which happened to be timetabled for the same night as the East Edinburgh Development Committee, Craigmillar Castle Residents Association AGM and two other community meetings. Make sure that the agenda of the meeting is not publicised and only shows up on the night. Hit the community council with the fait accompli of voting your employee into the position of returning officer.

Weeks before any community council meeting discussing the returning officer, the current secretary of the Community Council, David Walker who also earns his living from the public purse as the leader of C[r]apacity Building Project informed the council’s community council monitoring officer, Eileen Hewitt that his employee Mike Bell was to be the returning officer. This was handy cause not only is David Walker (Community Council Secretary) his boss but his other bosses are Paul Nolan (disgraced ex-councillor and Community Council Chairman), Patsy King (Community Council Treasurer), Mick McNulty community council voting member.

The fix is in position.

If this sounds like some tinpot dictatorship in the third world - you are not far wrong. It is definitely a tinpot dictatorship but it is down in the east of Edinburgh, in Craigmillar which is far from a democracy.

Roll forward a few days - Residents rally round. A petition with over 400 signatures is presented to the Council Leader Donald “Teflon Don” Anderson complaining about the fix - after only a few days of collecting signatures - asking the council, as governing body, to intervene and have an independent person installed as returning officer. (To put this into perspective, normally less than the 16 required people to form a community council ever put their name forward so over 400 is considered overwhelming).

Roll forward a few weeks.

The Community Council election process for the area has now started.

Teflon Don the council leader turns his back on the citizens of Craigmillar and does nothing to intervene. Members of the community approach the returning officer for nomination forms and are turned down. Elderly people are told when they telephone for a nomination form that they have run out of envelopes and the elderly person will have to go to the Capacity Building Project to collect the form. Local community activists ask for forms to distribute but are told that they will not get them. Current community council members call for a nomination form and are told that there are none. Disabled people turn up at the C[r]apacity Building Project to ask the returning officer for a nomination form and the Returning Officer refuses to come down the stairs to supply the form.

The councils (City and Community) are not seen by the electorate to be holding a free and fair election and EdinburghSucks calls on our Members of European Parliament to immediately call in EU election monitors for the election.

The Local Councillor who would normally be the Returning officer, namely, Jack O’Donnell indicated that he didn’t have the time to be the returning officer - GREAT REPRESENTATION!