LONDON: A senior British minister compared the latest scandal involving Tory candidates accused of betting on the election date to Partygate, a series of Covid-era parties that brought down Boris Johnson.
Housing minister Michael Gove compared the betting allegations to the Partygate scandal in an interview with the Times newspaper on Saturday.
“It looks like one rule for them and one rule for us... That’s the most potentially damaging thing,” said Gove, who is standing down this election after 14 years as an MP.
“That was damaging at the time of Partygate and is damaging here,” he added.
Prime minister Johnson was forced from office in 2022 following public anger at the revelations of parties held in Downing Street when the rest of the country was under lockdown during the pandemic.
Now another senior Conservative Party figure has been caught up in the latest scandal.
The party’s chief data officer, Nick Mason, has taken a leave of absence, following claims he placed bets on the timing of the election, the PA news agency reported Saturday.
Mason is being investigated by betting regulators, accused of placing dozens of bets on the election date according to the Times. He is the fourth Tory figure to be implicated in the affair.
The party’s campaign director stepped aside following reports on Thursday that he and his wife, a Tory candidate in the July 4 election, were under investigation by the Gambling Commission.
The scandal broke a week earlier, when Tory candidate and Sunak’s ministerial aide Craig Williams said he was being probed for staking a bet on the snap election date before it was called.
On Wednesday, London police said one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s security detail had been arrested for allegedly placing a bet on the date.
Sunak has said he is “incredibly angry” over the revelations.
“If anyone is found to have broken the rules, not only should they face the full consequences of the law, I will make sure that they are booted out of the Conservative Party,” he said earlier this week.
Political bets are allowed in the UK, including on the date of elections, but using insider knowledge to do so is against the law.
The inquiries heap further misery on Sunak, whose party has trailed Labour by about 20 points in the polls for nearly two years, making it odds-on to be dumped out of office after 14 years.
Gove said that those involved in the betting scandal were “sucking the oxygen out of the campaign.”
Comparing it to Partygate again, he added: “A few individuals end up creating an incredibly damaging atmosphere for the party.
“So it’s both bad in itself, but also destructive to the efforts of all of those good people who are currently fighting hard for the Conservative vote.”
UK minister compares election betting scandal to Partygate
https://arab.news/cmut8
UK minister compares election betting scandal to Partygate
- Political bets are allowed in the UK, including on the date of elections, but using insider knowledge to do so is against the law
First charges in Philippine flood control scandal target ex-lawmaker, officials
- Rage over so-called ghost infrastructure, believed to have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, has been building for months
- Construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard projects
MANILA: Philippine prosecutors filed on Tuesday the first criminal charges in a sweeping corruption scandal over bogus flood control projects, promising “many” more indictments in the case that has prompted public ire and protests.
Rage over so-called ghost infrastructure, believed to have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, has been building for months, ever since President Ferdinand Marcos put the issue center stage in a July address after weeks of deadly flooding.
Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers in the archipelago country have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard projects.
On Tuesday, the ombudsman’s office unveiled charges against former congressman Elizaldy Co, public works officials and members of a construction firm over their ties to a “grossly” substandard road dike in Oriental Mindoro province.
The charges include falsification of documents, misuse of public funds and graft law violations.
“Public funds were meant to protect communities from flooding, not to enrich officials or private contractors,” ombudsman spokesman Mico Clavano told a press briefing.
He said the department was acting on the first case submitted by an independent commission, with more in the preliminary investigation stage.
“This is the first of many cases that will be filed in court,” he said.
The announcement comes a day after Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), a church which has historically been a powerful voting bloc with ties to the Duterte political dynasty, concluded back-to-back rallies in Manila that drew hundreds of thousands of people.
The rallies saw INC leaders allude to “emerging evidence” in the case, and featured videos that Co. – who has gone into hiding – released from abroad, accusing Marcos of masterminding the corruption.
While it was Marcos who pledged to identify the guilty and name names in his July speech, the ensuing furor has enveloped friend and foe alike.
On Monday, the Marcos administration saw two cabinet members, executive secretary Lucas Bersamin and budget director Amenah Pangandaman, step down after being linked to flood-control fraud.
The president’s congressman cousin, Martin Romualdez, resigned as House speaker in September after being implicated.
At Monday’s INC rally, Senator Imee Marcos, the president’s sister and a key ally of his arch-foe Vice President Sara Duterte, took to the stage to accuse him of drug use, saying it had impaired his judgment.
“His addiction became the reason for the flood of corruption, the lack of direction and very wrong decisions,” she said.
President Marcos’s son Sandro fired back on Tuesday, slamming the accusations as “not only false, but dangerously irresponsible.”
