Posted on 06/08/2005 9:24:15 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
British police on Wednesday began a probe into possible electoral fraud in the parliamentary constituency won on May 5 by George Galloway, the MP who last month angrily defied a U.S committee over Iraq charges.
"We have received a formal allegation of electoral fraud and are investigating," a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said.
Last month Galloway, 50, defiantly told a Senate committee that he rejected as "utterly preposterous" charges that he had profited from the Iraq oil-for-food program.
Far from showing the usual deference of witnesses called by Congress, Galloway used the hearing as a platform to attack the U.S.-led invasion.
The battle for the east London parliamentary seat of Bow and Bethnal Green was one of the most bitter and hard-fought of the election which saw Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor party returned to power.
Galloway overturned a Labor majority of more than 10,000 to win the seat for his Respect party with a margin of just 823 votes.
At the time there were claims and counter claims of "ghost" voters and of intimidation of party workers from both Labor and Respect.
Galloway, a flamboyant Scot expelled from the Labor party over his stance on Iraq, faced ridicule during the election campaign as being a friend of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
But he said he met the former dictator only a few times and no more than Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Although there had been electoral fraud worries ahead of the election, which returned Blair with a reduced majority in the House of Commons, the Bow and Bethnal Green investigation is understood to be the first.
In April, an election commissioner described postal voting as an "open invitation to fraud" after an inquiry into a local election in Birmingham.
About 15 percent of the electorate voted by post.
Is anyone over there investigating Galloway for the Oil For Food matter?
He's a liberal. Give it up. It won't work. We tried it in Washington State and failed. You just can't catch a liberal in a crime these days.
They don't get specific in this article. Are they thinking of overturning the results? I wouldn't put it past Labour to pull some major election fraud, but then again Fascists like Galloway are known for such tactics.
Best outcome, Galloway is hauled off in shackles, and the UK abolishes postal voting and preserves some semblance of a functional voting process.
Liberal? More like a Communist...
I stand corrected.
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