A letter to the Chelsea Bridge Wharf Residents’ Association on the 2024 Chair Elections and Right to Manage

18^th March 2024
 
From  Mike O’Driscoll
Warwick leaseholder
To: CBWRA  ‘Co-Chairs’                                                 
Larisa Villar Hauser, Louis Sebastian Kendall
 
Thank you for your email to leaseholders regarding the Chair elections 2024. It is a shame that as with the 2023 elections, residents have had to drag you kicking and screaming into holding these elections, which are more than 2 months late.
The 2024 Chair elections are already set up to be extremely biased, with the apparent aim of reducing turnout as far as possible (from an already small base – only around 350 people voted in the 2023 chair elections) and of trying to ensure that those who do vote do will do so before reading the candidates’ manifestos and before meeting them. Specifically, It seems that bias/misconduct has been built in to the elections the following ways

1. The elections are two months late
2. Only leaseholders who are paid up members of CBWRA will be eligible to vote. The categories of residents who are allowed to vote has grown smaller at every election – in 2021 it included all leaseholders and tenants who had lived at CBW for 6 months or more; in 2023 all leaseholders could vote but in 2024 only leaseholders who are CBWRA members and who have paid their subscriptions will not be allowed to vote. This means that even fewer people will vote in the 2024 Chair elections than last time (300 approx out of 1150 properties voted in the 2023 Chair elections)
3. The only meeting between residents and candidates for Chair will be 4 days after voting has opened! And even this date is referred to as ‘tentative’ i.e. maybe moved even further after voting has started or not held at all. In my view this is a clear attempt at electoral manipulation – the hope seems to be that most people will vote before they have a chance to meet the candidates and therefore will be more likely to vote for the name which is most familiar (i.e. the current incumbents)
4. The deadline for manifestos to be submitted is the 2nd April – the same day that voting opens so clearly the intention is to circulate manifestos on the day that voting starts so that potential voters will not have an adequate chance to consider them before voting.
5. No details have been given of the submission format of manifestos and these details will be decided by the current chairs, giving them a large advantage of preparation time.
6. One of the few people likely to stand against the current  Chairs (i.e. Mike O’Driscoll) has been banned from the CBW app since May 2022 without any meaningful process or explanation. Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall  state that there is a legal reason why they cannot discuss the closure of my CBW app account but are unable to say what that reason is or to supply any documentary evidence. The Closure of my CBW app is clearly an act of political censorship – to silence someone who correctly pointed out that the CBWRA committee were misleading residents (up to the end of 2022) that RTM was not possible. There is nothing to prevent the arbitrary closure of any other CBW app account by the Co-Chairs (see below)
7. In September 2023, residents strongly supported a motion stating that CBW app account could not be closed without the use of a written process which included evidence of rule breaking on the app, warnings and a right of appeal, This motion has simply been ignored by the CBWRA committee and that is clearly because they want to retain the right to arbitrarily close the CBW app accounts of those who criticise the committee or simply ask questions which the Chairs/ committee do not want to have asked. This makes it impossible for residents to criticise the committee or to support other candidates for Chair during the elections
8. CBWRA have also stated there will be no elections for the Directors of the Right to Manage company which will have full control over a £5 million service charge budget if Right to Manage goes through. Unelected, unaccountable, unsackable. They recruit each other without any resident input or consultation.
9. Online bullying remains rampant on the CBW app and it seems that anyone who asks questions or even vaguely criticises the committee is likely to be attacked by committee members or people who appear to be ‘friends of the committee’. Some of these people appear to have a license to bully with impunity. This again makes it impossible for there to be any discussion of the issues which concern residents let alone to discuss policies, candidates or elections. Those who criticise the committee or simply ask questions are likely to face some or all of the following, without any evidence being supplied.
   1. Accusations that they are not residents or that they are fake accounts
   2. Demands that they prove their identity or that they must their real name and not use a username (no such demands are made of people who do not criticise the committee and the use of usernames is  not against the rules of the CBW app)
   3. Accusations that they are unreasonable or negative people
   4. Accusations that they are liars
   5. Demands that residents send all queries to the Chairs in private emails and not to post them publicly on the app (to ensure there is no discussion)
   6. Complaints against those who engage in pro-committee online bullying,  behaviour which is an obvious violation of the CBW app rules, and which are clearly online bullying, are ignored

The point of all the above is in my view to create a culture of fear – to make people afraid to ask even the most mundane and harmless questions on the CBW app and certainly not to criticise the Chairs the committee. This ‘strategy’ has indeed created much fear and disengagement amongst residents which is not an unwelcome outcome for some.

1. The so called ‘oversight committee’ which was responsible for the conduct of the 2023 elections have not admitted any wrongdoing despite the ample evidence that the 2023 elections were not conducted fairly and no one on this committee has been sanctioned in any way for their conduct. These people are still the ‘oversight committee’ (which clearly conducts no oversight at all) and that make it almost certain that the misconduct of the 2023 elections will be repeated.

Imagine if political parties did this at local or national elections – i.e. you could not see their manifesto until voting opened, potential political opponents are banned from the media and you do not get the chance to meet the candidates or ask the questions until after voting has started. 
I think any reasonable person would call this electoral manipulation.  I would call it further evidence of a banana republic model (i.e. systematically weakening or eliminating checks and balances on the power of the Chair and committee and making it almost impossible for fair elections to happen) which in my view was developed by the former Chair, , and continued by his successors who are very much ‘continuity Thompson’ in my opinion.
The above manipulations which are planned for the 2024 elections  are in addition to those of the 2023 election (shown below) which it seems you intend to repeat as there has been no recognition of any wrong doing. Those committee members who were so obviously guilty of bullying online and offline are still committee members and there has been no apology to myself or any of those who were bullied.
When I submitted a complaint about the conduct o the 2023 Chair elections, it was ignored for around 6 weeks and then supposedly  ‘investigated by the very people who were the subject of the complaint. The response to the complaint from CBWRA was a few lines which basically translates as ‘we asked ourselves if the complaint was true and decided it was not’.
The complaint was submitted  on 15^th Jan finally received a reply after 6 weeks of no acknowledgement.

• One candidate (Mike O’Driscoll) was banned from the CBW app for drawing attention to CBWRA’s misinformation about Right to Manage, and was subjected to a daily onslaught of character assassination and defamation by the former Chair and other committee members to which he was unable to respond . Despite numerous requests, CBWRA are still unable to provide any evidence of a valid reason for the closure of Mike O’Driscoll’s app account. This is censorship.
• When I asked the Secretary (Catherine Thome) why this behaviour  was being allowed on the CBW app I received  no meaningful reply and my request for the complaints procedure was ignored
• Two candidates (Louis-Sebastian Kendall and Larisa Villar Hauser) stood jointly, thus pooling their votes, in a massive and clear violation of the CBWRA constitution.
• Chris Garston of Garton-Jones estate agents contacted around 400 leaseholders by email , while voting was live, sending them a voting link, and a strong recommendation to vote for Louis-Sebastian Kendall and Larisa Villar Hauser and only linking to their manifesto, not those of the other candidate (Mike O’Driscoll).
• One candidate withdrew from the ballot after (in his view) being intimidated by the former CBWRA Chair at a CBWRA committee meeting and following the meeting, in the CBW piazza. I believe this incident resulted in a complaint to the Police.
• CBWRA ask Rendall and Rittner to change the way they collect CBWRA membership fees because ”MOD was likely to run as chair” and the CBWRA committee ”needs funds to assist their cause”.
• It is not clear what percentage of leaseholders were contacted directly by CBWRA with the ‘official’ email which contained links to manifesto of all candidates
• It is not clear what percentage of leaseholders were not contacted at all, by any means but it clearly was not 100% or even close
• The recording of the meeting between candidates for Chair and residents, just prior to voting ( a meeting which went very well for me and not quite so well for the former Chair or his proteges was ‘lost’ – according to the CBWRA secretary this was because of a ‘poor wifi connection’. (I am not sure why a phone requires wi-fi to record but I guess I don’t understand CBWRA technology).

 
Based on the way in which the 2023 elections were conducted, and the way on which it is clearly planned to conduct the 2024 elections, I can only assume that Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall are terrified of a fair and free elections and given their performance, their total lack of ideas or policies and their evident contempt for consulting with residents I can understand why.

I and many other residents would  be grateful if you could explain why you have arranged the 2024 Chair elections in such a way that they cannot possibly  be fair and why you a failed to take any action against the people who misconducted the 2023 Chair  elections (that would probably include yourselves of course so I can appreciate your difficulty)  

Residents would also like  to know why you think it is acceptable to have no elections for the Directors of the Right to Manage company which will have almost complete control over a £5 million service  charge budget after Right to Manage goes through.
 
Best Wishes
 
Mike O’Driscoll  


CBWRA proposed timetable for 2024 Chair elections (with my comments in bold )
Call for manifestos – 19 March (this more than 2 months later than the due date)
·       Deadline for applications – 2 April
·       Voting opens – 2 April   (i.e. CBWRA are saying that voting opens the same day as manifestos are released)
Only CBWRA members who have paid their membership fees  by 5^th April will be allowed to vote which is likely to  hugely reduce participation in the elections from an already low level (just 350 votes in the 2023 Chair elections)
·       Meet and greet – 6 April (tentative)  (i.e. the only event where residents can meet candidates and ask questions happens at least  4 day after voting opens – there is no commitment to allow online participation and last year the recording was mysteriously lost)
·       Voting closes – 12 April, 9pm
·       Result announced – 15 April
·       Chair takeover (if a new Chair is appointed) – 1 May