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
Hundreds of thousands of Catholics join Black Nazarene procession in Manila
- Around 80 percent of Philippines’ 110 million population are Roman Catholics
- The annual 6km procession began at 4 a.m. on Friday
MANILA: Hundreds of thousands of Catholics took part in a barefoot procession in Manila on Friday, carrying the Black Nazarene, a centuries-old ebony statue of Jesus Christ believed by devotees to have miraculous powers.
Around 80 percent of the Philippines’ 110 million population identify as Roman Catholic, a legacy of more than 300 years of Spanish colonization.
After a midnight mass joined by tens of thousands of worshippers, the procession began at the Quirino Grandstand at 4 a.m., with the statue of Jesus placed on a cross carried by a four-wheel carriage, which then slowly traveled through Manila’s roads, thronged by massive crowds, for around 6 kilometers.
The procession — which is known as the Traslacion (“transfer”) or as the Feast of the Black Nazarene — commemorates the 1787 relocation of the Black Nazarene from a church inside the colonial Spanish capital of Intramuros in Manila’s center to its present location in Quiapo Church.
For many Filipino Catholics, the annual procession and the festivities surrounding it are deeply personal — a way of expressing deep faith and spiritual devotion, and conveying their personal prayers.
“As early as Jan. 8, you will already see a long queue of devotees near the Quirino Grandstand. Many of them are there to get the chance to wipe a towel on the image of the Nazarene. That’s their devotion,” Jomel Bermudez told Arab News.
Many devotees believe the statue is miraculous, and that touching it, or the ropes attached to its float, can heal illness or help provide good health, jobs and a better life. This belief is partly because the statue has survived multiple earthquakes, fires, floods, and even the bombing of Manila in the Second World War.
“We wipe (the towels) on our bodies, especially on sick people,” Bermudez continued. “My father, for example, was diagnosed with leukemia and now he is already recovered. He was one of my prayers last year. He is 56, and he survived.”
On Friday, many devotees were clad in maroon and yellow as they flooded the streets to swarm the statue, jostling for a chance to pull its thick rope.
Bermudez, who first participated in the procession in 2014, said he was inspired to do so by seeing the effect it had had on friends who had taken part.
“I saw friends whose lives really changed. That encouraged me to change too,” he said, adding that this year he is one of a group on the sidelines helping to keep the procession moving.
“My prayers before were already answered. This time, I’m praying for my children’s success in life,” he said.
Jersey Banez, a 23-year-old devotee, was among those who arrived as early as 2 a.m. to take part in the procession.
“I do this every year. I’m just grateful for a happy life,” he told Arab News. “My prayer is still the same: to have a happy family and a happy life, and that everyone and everything that needs to change will change.”
