Everybody Loves Rehman

Every now and again we get accused of being unfair on Gillingham and Rainham MP and Rainham Central councillor Rehman Chishti. Because we like to shine a light on what he’s up to among his many roles, apparently we are treating him unreasonably. Obviously that’s utter nonsense, but we thought in the spirit of Christmas it would be good to check in with what other local residents think of the esteemed MP. Surely that way we’d be able to build a balanced picture of how he is viewed in the community.

To start, we decided to look close to home, and see what comments had been left about Chishti on our own comments section.

Okay, maybe not the best start there. Surely they won’t all be this negative though.

Probably not a good sign when we’re at ‘probably the worst (MP) that has represented me’ two posts in.

So maybe our comments section isn’t the best place to look for objective comments about Rehman. How about we try Twitter instead?

He did that to me on a train too. Even though we studied politics together and joined the Labour Party at the same time.

— Lindsey Burke (@Therantingmonk) October 20, 2018

Blanking constituents on the train is one way to build up your local support.

I saw him at Gillingham station getting huffy with the guy at the barrier for making him use his ticket to open his own gate, instead of opening the gate that's for people with wheelchairs and buggies for him.

— Roxanne (@RoxanneJG) October 21, 2018

Obviously we can’t verify how true any of these anecdotes might be, but it’s not hard to imagine, is it?

Rainham is clearly suffering at the moment what with Rehman’s lack of attention & Carr’s suspension from the planning committee. All coming at a time when Rainham need both these guys to stop taking selfies & look at the pressures being added to the area by new housing proposals.

— Katt Winter (@Katt_Winter) October 20, 2018

A cursory glance at Rehman’s Instagram would suggest accusing him of taking too many selfies is completely unreasonable.

Disappointed Rehman didn't reply to you, he's normally so keen to see his name featured by the press (using that term loosely here of course)

— Pablo Bolco (@PabloBolco1) November 5, 2018

Sadly, Rehman continues to refuse to engage with us, and hasn’t done since he refused to say hello and then ran away from us at the 2015 election night counts.

Never answers his constituents – waste of space – obfuscation and crap – why do we pay for this rubbish?

— Peter Cook (@AcademyOfRock) October 19, 2018

It’s almost like we’re seeing a trend here about Rehman’s performance in responding to his constituents. Maybe Facebook can shed some new light.

‘Rarely returns a call’, you say?

There has to be a positive comment in here somewhere.

Even people who voted for him seem pretty disgruntled at this point.

Has anyone ever had a reply to a letter from Rehman Chishti? Someone, somewhere must have done at some point, surely?

Oh. Well, maybe our social media channels don’t provide the most objective responses. So let’s take a look at the KentOnline comments section to see what readers there think about Chishti.

That seems like a potentially optimistic assessment.

Well, at least he replied to somebody.

Oh.

It would appear that our mission to find a more balanced view of Rehman Chishti might not have gone fully according to plan. Do you have a different experience of the Gillingham and Rainham MP? Is he, contrary to the comments above, actually the the best person who has ever represented you? Let us know in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter.