London Mayor Ken Livingstone on Friday faced the double ignominy of suspension from office and becoming liable for at least ?80,000 (US$136,000) in costs after a disciplinary tribunal found him guilty of bringing his position into disrepute by likening a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard.
More than a year after his late night confrontation with Oliver Finegold, a reporter for the London Evening Standard newspaper, Livingstone was told he must stand down for a month from March 1 for his "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" behavior towards the journalist.
But the ruling triggered a constitutional row as Livingstone's allies and independent observers railed against the idea of a politician with the biggest personal mandate in Europe being deposed, albeit temporarily, by unelected officials.
The decision to suspend Livingstone, who was elected with sizeable majorities in 2000 and 2004, was taken by the Adjudication Panel, the UK government body which deals with serious disciplinary cases involving local government.
"This decision strikes at the heart of democracy. Elected politicians should only be able to be removed by the voters or for breaking the law," Livingstone said.
"Three members of a body that no one has ever elected should not be allowed to overturn the votes of millions of Londoners," he said.
He said he will decide next week whether to challenge the decision at the high court.
David Laverick, chairman of the disciplinary panel to which the matter was referred, said the punishment was solely at his panel's discretion.
He concluded: "The mayor does seem to have failed, from the outset of this case, to have appreciated that his conduct was unacceptable, was a breach of the code [the Greater London Authority code of conduct] and did damage to the reputation of his office ... it is the mayor who must take responsibility for this."
The ruling was welcomed by the London Jewish Forum. Its chairman, Adrian Cohen, said: "It should never have reached this point when a simple apology could have avoided all the pain caused to so many Jewish Londoners who have been affected by the Holocaust."
The incident occurred last February as Livingstone left a party marking the 20 years since former UK culture secretary Chris Smith became Britain's first openly gay MP. In a tape-recorded exchange, he asked Finegold whether he had ever been a "German war criminal."
On being told that the reporter objected to the remark and was Jewish, the mayor said: "Ah, well you might be but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?"
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS