Alex Salmond Resigned
Alex Salmond |
Former SNP
leader Alex Salmond has resigned
from the party during allegations of sexual abuse. In a statement, he said that
he wanted to avoid internal division within the SNP, who had faced the call to
suspend him.
He has
denied any mistake, and said that he wanted to apply for re-joining after
getting an opportunity to clear his name. It had emerged last week that members
of two Scottish government employees lodged a complaint about their behavior in
January when he was the first minister.
Mr. Salmond has described the allegations as
"stereotypical" - and has also criticized the complaint process,
which claims to be "unjust".
On Tuesday,
he started legal action against the Scotland government in the Sessions Court
during the conduct of the allegations of formally misconduct allegations.
In a
statement issued on social media, Mr.
Salmond said that he has been a member of the SNP for 45 years, 20 of them
are party leaders and seven ministers.
He further
said: "I really love the SNP and the broad freedom movement in Scotland.
They have been the defining commitment of my life. But today I have resigned
from my membership of the National Secretary of the party."
Mr. Salmond indicated that his resignation was
to avoid possible divisions within the party, because his successor, Nicola
Sturgeon faced opposition calls to suspend the SNP membership.
Alex Salmond Resigned |
Mr. Salmond said that he did not come to
politics to smooth the progress of opposition attacks on SNP and return to
parliament next week; he has resigned his order to remove this line of
opposition harass.
"Most
of all, I know that if the party feels compelled to suspend me, then there will
be enough internal division."
The current
SNP leader and first minister Nicole Sturgeon said that he "felt a great
sadness about the whole situation".
In a
statement on Twitter, he said that this decision alone was Alex Salmond, and he understood why he chose "to separate
current questions from SNP to day-to-day business and independence from the
ongoing campaign".
She further
said: "The hard fact is that the Scottish Government received two
complaints which could not be ignored under the carpet."
The Daily
Record newspaper broke the news of allegations of sexual abuse last Thursday.
The paper claims that the word of a complaint has been found, which describes
an event occurring in the first official residence of the First Minister in
Edinburgh, Bute House in the first week of December 2013.
The Scottish
government had lodged a complaint to the two women in January this year, after
a few weeks of adopting a new complaint process in light of widespread concern
about sexual harassment in Holyrood and Westminster.
Mr. Salmond claims that the senior Scottish
government was "unfair and unjust" in investigating the charges against
the civil servants of the government.
He said that
he had "no chance to challenge the case against me properly and therefore
to challenge" and he was not allowed to "see the evidence". Mr. Salmond has also claimed that
someone within the Scottish Government has violated the "clearly and
repeatedly" confidential complaint procedure by leaking details in the
daily records.
He is now
seeking a judicial review of the new complaint process and has appealed to the
crowd to fund its legal action.
Alex Salmond Resigned |
Alex Salmond
· Leaders
of the Scottish National Party of 1990-2000 and 2004-2014
·
First
Minister of Scotland 2007 – 2014
·
Scotland
stalled after voting to stay in the United Kingdom
The Scottish
government has stressed that the complaint process is completely
"completely confidential" and has said it will protect its position
in the courts. Complaints against Mr.
Salmond have also been passed to Police Scotland, who has said that it is
assessing the information.
Mr. Salmond was the first Scottish and SNP
leader until September 2014 when he resigned after a "no" vote in the
Scottish Independence Referendum. He returned to politics as Gordon's elected
as SNP MP in 2015, and two years later, Snap became the Foreign Affairs
spokesman of the Westminster Committee before losing the seat in the general
election.
After this,
he has had to face deep criticism for hosting Alex Salmond show on Russian broadcaster RT, Which has been
described as a promotional channel for the Kremlin - a claim Mr. Salmond has denied.
Alex Salmond Resigned
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