komerad

Just returned from the last of the three hustings held in Wales.
Sadly, due to a previous appointment I was unable to attend the first one in Anglesey, but was able to attend the final two.
I can only say how disgusted I am, after travelling nearly 200 miles, that 2 of the PPCs, Paul Wiffen (who I believe also stood in Scotland) & Anu GunaVardhana failed to appear at any of the three hustings.
I am astounded that they have the audacity to put their names forward as serious candidates for selection, yet do not have the courage to face the Welsh Membership regarding their suitability as candidates.
I dismiss you both as carpet - baggers!!
The two hustings I attended at Groesfaen (near Cardiff) & tonight at Builth Wells were quite well attended, with the four remaining candidates
each giving excellent speeches & even better responses to some very aggressive questions from the members present.
Personally, I thought that John Bufton just shaded the other candidates with some excellent answers to some very difficult questions.
A very enjoyable evening, but dismayed at the non appearance of two of the candidates after traveling so far to hear their views.
To any Scots on the forum - how many hustings did Mr Wiffen attend in your area??

Raymond Finch

To not show up at ANY hustings without a valid excuse is unconscionable.
Did either of these two people send a reason for their non-attendance?

komerad

RF - IIRC neither chairman at either husting I attended read out any apologies from the candidates concerned.

Michael Heaver

Glad to see you thought John Bufton stood out. The guy is a class act and would make a brilliant UKIP MEP.

Anthony Butcher

The couple of occasions that I met John he seemed like a good chap, and RS rated him as a good RO in Wales.

My only concern would be that he was the returning officer for the last NEC elections. When the vote miraculously tripled and the lead candidate received more votes than Nigel Farage got to become party leader alarm bells should have been ringing. A returning officer has a duty to ensure that an election is free and fair, and clearly in this case it was highly suspicious and should have been investigated. John, apparently, decided not to investigate however.

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stathan

I'd suggest that you are way out of line on this one and perhaps didn't quite think before putting fingers to keyboard.

John is scrupulously honest and presumably can only oversee what is put in front of him.

Why not put your constant carping about UKIP to one side for a moment and clarify for others what you actually mean regarding your comments regarding a totally honest and decent extremely hard worker for the party?


At the moment it would appear that you are casting aspersions as to John's integrity which I can assure you are way out of line.

Bob FM

I have no wish to be rude AB, but I am accused of making posts that do not make sense. Are you saying that Nigel was defeated and then someone tripled the vote to make him a winner?.

Anthony Butcher

How about rather than attacking me you answer the substantive point? Are you saying that there was nothing suspicious about the election result? And are you saying that the Returning Officer shouldn't investigate suspicious results?

I have made no judgement on his integrity at all, I merely said it was a concern. He presumably made a judgement on it, I just disagree with that judgement. Or maybe he did investigate, but it isn't public knowledge.

I said two positive and one potentially negative thing about John. I thought that the purpose of these threads is for people to share their knowledge and opinions of the candidates to assist members in making an informed choice between the candidates. If you disagree with the opinion, fine, but attacking me for stating an opinion in a thread for that purpose is ridiculous.

No. Normally around 13-16% of the party membership votes in an NEC election. Last year this number jumped to 41% apparently. When the votes were counted, the winner, Lisa Duffy, received more votes than Nigel Farage had received in the leadership election. That's why it was very suspicious.

It could be a completely genuine freak electoral incident, but it is clearly suspicious and anyone without partisan blindness will agree it should have been investigated. All it would have taken is randomly phoning 50 or so of the members who had apparently voted to check that this was really the case.

The fact that it wasn't investigated, AFAIK, has left a lot of UKIP members, including senior members, deeply suspicious about vote fraud. The South West region recently asked for their MEP selection poll to be independently monitored.

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komerad

The South West region & the Wales region asked that their regional polls
be independently monitored by the Electoral Reform Socity Services,as all the major parties do.
This request was, I believe, refused by the NEC, too costly perhaps??
As a member of a trade union for the past fifty years, all elections from local officials, to Union NEC elections, to the Leadership elections were always monitored by the ERS.or their predecessors.This ensured complete confidence in the election results.
Sadly, UKIP continue to keep the counting of all votes in-house, which means that some members whose chosen candidates are not successful are given an opportunity to raise doubts about the result.
For the sake of a few £K everything would be transparent & everyone happy. False economy!!

michael mcgough

AB; are you taking into account the weighting system and the fact that one can vote for all candidates,some or one only.Are you not guilty of smearing AB?????????????