Is that a candidate in your pocket, or...?

While he's big enough to take care of himself without Watchers coming to his aid, we're a little puzzled by the amount of mud being slung at Morgs Hunter-Bell over his non-showing in the buy-election.

The crux of this particular matter, we believe, is that according to Morgs:

"Before The Chronicle saw, before LawsWatch woke up that day, Michael Laws read my announcement and emailed me offering to pay my nomination fee".

This tells us two things:

1. Not content with having one official declared candidate in the race (Phillipa Baker-Hogan), the Diva was taking a keen interest in other candidates, particularly, it seems, those with whom he thought he could wield some influence.
2. If he made such an approach to one candidate, chances are that similar offers of some form of support may have been made to others. It's time, perhaps, that all candidates made some sort of statement as to what, if any, assistance they have opted to receive from the Mayor.

Despite being, on his own admission, virtually penniless, Morgs turned down that offer and thereby lost a chance to run for office. He could have accepted and, as the rules stand at present, never disclosed that he had. He could also have kept silent about the offer even though he didn't accept. Given that we're about trying to bring some openness and accountability to Wanganui politics, we can only commend his actions. It's clear that the Diva agrees with some commenters that Morgs would have been a "clone" had he been elected (or he wouldn't have offered his support) but on the strength of his actions to date it's possible they're wrong.

But this isn't about Morgs. He's not a candidate and we wish him luck with whatever influence he can bring to bear with the various youth initiatives with which he's involved. It's about the way politics is played in Wanganui.

Of course the Lawsmob (or the Diva himself in one of his anonymous guises) will no doubt attempt to justify this by saying that increasing the field of candidates improves the choice available to voters. Or something. Which handily overlooks the point that if many of the people standing for election are in fact doing so with the implicit backing of the Mayor whilst failing to disclose that fact that's not aiding democracy, that's perverting it. And while all we're aware of at present is a relatively paltry $200, to someone without a job $200 is a lot of money. One can only speculate as to how beholden someone in Morgs's position may have felt, or whether any further support would have been forthcoming.

If a trainer wants to have more than one horse in a race, that's fine - so long as the jockeys wear their colours openly so people are aware of their connections. Otherwise the race is potentially open to fixing.

But this is the way politics is now done in Wanganui, and it's reminiscent of Hawkes Bay in the 1990s. Back then, the Diva decided to take his bread and circuses formula to the poor, downtrodden inhabitants of Flaxmere. He fixed on their need for a high school and set out to win their hearts and minds.

But the whole thing got caught up in education politics and the Diva found he "would need to revert to blackmail to secure the victory". On page 256 of "The Demon Profession" he explains how he successfully dealt with obstacles put in his way by then Education Minister Lockwood Smith:

My only regret was that I could not claim any public credit for fear of exposing the deceit, blackmail and general lack of good faith in my manoeuvrings. But a deal was a deal. And sometimes one must do evil to achieve good. In that one moment I had become entirely corrupted by the political process. All my public platitudes about honesty and accountability had been seared away by a mixture of self-interest and sentimentality.

The theme appears even earlier, on page 236 (dealing with how he decided to overcame his principles and stood for re-election under the National Party banner):

Dostoevsky was right, the ends do justify the means. That is the thing about politics. You can fake sincerity so plausibly because the first person you con is yourself.

Sadly, though, the con doesn't end there, as many of the comments on this blog demonstrate. We're often accused of being automatically against anything done by the Mayor, and let's accept for a moment that's correct. If so, that's far less a danger to democracy than those who unquestioningly accept every piece of spin from Guyton Street and fawn over their "celebrity" Mayor in public, in the newspapers (which in the case of the RCP at least, a leading lickspittle actually edits) and in comments to this blog. Because without close scrutiny even the fairest and most honest administration can make mistakes and even, possibly, become corrupt. And with an avowed believer that "the ends justify the means" elected to the town's highest office, the possibilty of that occuring can only be heightened.

We wish a Happy New Year to the hardworking toilers in the Chron newsroom, to the set-upon souls at Guyton Street and of course to all our readers, and hope that for some at least their resolutions will include that the scales fall from their eyes in 2006.

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