You’re not in Guatemala now, Michael

Watchers who are wondering what Guatemala and Wanganui have in common may not be surprised to learn that the rulers of the corruption-infested Central American nation immortalised in our very own soap Shortland Street (and retained for posterity at youtube) also enjoy a referendum or three.

The only difference would seem to be that when Guatemala’s citizens line up to vote “according to the customs and traditions of the communities - by a raising of the hand, a paper vote, or the signing of a list provided by the community mayor”, there are no fewer than “384 national and international observers, as well as delegates from the Human Rights Procurator's Office” keeping a beady eye on proceedings.

Incidentally, the hapless citizens of Guatemala are also in the early stages of a campaign leading up to September elections and in the same week that Michael Laws was honing his political assassination hit list at a meeting debating the gang bylaw, ABC was reporting that they’re also wasting no time getting down to the messy business in Guatemala, where “20 political figures had been killed before official campaigning even began”.

We’re not in Guatemala now, Watchers, but many of you are asking about the mysterious disappearance from the mayoral agenda of the Mad Mayor’s Heart of Wanganui project. And at the Cave we are beginning to suspect it might have been rubbed out in an unusual and stealthy act of political assassination.

As we prepare to turn the calendar page on yet another month in Referendum City, we stumbled across the October 4th 2006 news release promising the biggest ever propaganda campaign in the leadup to a mid-May referendum.

The campaign will kick off on Thursday, October 26. After the initial meetings, further information will be provided by:

1. Advertising the options in 'Community Link' (the council's weekly page in the Wanganui Chronicle).

2. Special pamphlets delivered to every householder (two deliveries).

3. Suburban public meetings and presentations.

4. A dedicated website.

5. A shopfront display on Victoria Avenue.

6. Further public meetings in the lead-up to the referendum in mid-May 2007.

Oops! Items 5 and 6 seem to be missing in action, as the Chron(ic) beats the drums for Philippa Baker-Hogan’s alternative monument at Cooks Gardens, and breathlessly reports that “at this point a rough estimate of a possible price of a full events centre would be somewhere around $10 million”. Cheap as chips, really, compared to the mega-millions (and up to $284 per ratepayer impost) needed to give birth to Mickey’s Heart.

No mention yet of a referendum and we look forward to hearing just how financial wizard Julian Harkness will find $80,000 for a feasibility study for this new slice of pie in the Wanganui sky, on top of the more than a quarter of a million already tossed at the Heart project.

But back to the Heart of the Matter, Watchers. Idle speculation over Sunday lattes at the Cave has us wondering whether the Heart has flatlined because it’s just too damned hard to squeeze the myriad and confusing options onto a referendum that by it’s very nature must be nothing more than a propaganda campaign to ensure voters tick the box that Michael Laws wants them to tick. In view of whispers here at LawsWatch that Deputy Dotty has done the deal of her life to be put up as Vision’s Great Mayoral Hope, on a nightmare ticket with Mickey running as Deputy, can it be that’s she’s losing her taste for caviar and champagne projects like the Heart?

Meanwhile, the ratepayers are stuck with the bills for last year’s Heart design extravaganza. Tony Van Raat may have been a buddy of Arts Czar Sally Patrick, but there’s no suggestion that his services, or the proven world-class talents of his fellow rich-and-famous Auckland architects Pete Bossley and David Mitchell came cheap. Unlike the forlorn, fading and just plain freaky “branding” exercise that polluted Wanganui’s streets and approaches with tackiness hailed by Mickey on December 12th last year as being an "extraordinarily cheap" example of mates rates by an Auckland hobbyist who, Commenters have been explaining under the last post, just happens to be a mate of a staffer of Mickey’s discredited Wanganui Inc.

And as we approach the start of the pre-election period with its ban on using council channels to promote the changes of incumbents, it’s no surprise to see Mickey also demanding dollars for Vision campaign events to “celebrate” everything from the sewerage plant and splash centre extensions to the airport runway improvements.

It’s all there in the minutes of the May 10th committee meeting, though there’s no record of the sniggers that undoubtedly emanated from the three remaining “independent” councillors at this little mayoral gem:

Mayor Laws said if the council agrees [to the Vision propaganda blitz] each project requires its own commemoration, a budget would be required. He said because of the timing of the triennial elections, a decision needed to be made now as a new council would not have time to make the necessary commemoration arrangements.

Now for the Miracles of Saint Dotty

Watchers have been moderately amused in the past week to see what appears to be the start of the canonisation of Deputy Dotty by Pope Michael Laws I and his conclave of diVisionary cardinals. Just a week ago an anonymii whispered in the comments section of this blog that:

Word is that Dot & Mickey have made a deal to swap places. He's so certain he'll be Deputy Mayor (as a Councillor), he's now planning which 'celebration' of the capital projects Dot will front in November. (12:15 PM, May 14, 2007).

A continuation of the Laws-Vision trainwreck for Wanganui, but a cosy arrangement for a mayor who knows his time is up, and the puppet deputy he so assiduously selected, fashioned and trained to dance to his mad tune. More convincingly, it’s the only way he could hope to keep his hands on the strings of power while also keeping Dotty from spilling her bags of dirt on the papacy of Michael in a gloves-off campaign against him for the mayoralty.

But as students of the wider church know, sainthood can’t just happen on the day the election campaign starts. As Wikipedia tells us,

“… the act of canonisation … occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the person proposed for canonisation lived, and died, in such a way that he or she is worthy to be recognised as a saint.”

While Dotty might well claim sainthood on the grounds that her years of officiating at the opening of an envelope while the real mayor is off doing his media thing(s), beatification usually requires a miracle or two. Hence, it was no surprise when John Maslin breathlessly and unquestioningly reported Mickey’s claims of sainthood for Dotty and the District Holdings crew who had managed to turn, not water into wine, but city debt into city surplus.

Holding co hailed as council saviour (19.05.2007 )

THE PERFORMANCE of the Wanganui District Council Holdings Ltd has been hailed as the major reason for a turnaround in council’s financial fortunes, helping turn a projected deficit into a forecast surplus. …The council is now forecasting a budget surplus of $265,000 for the quarter ending March this year, representing a major shift from the December 2006 forecast of a $384,000 deficit.

Read on and the fine print tells us the key reasons why the Council was headed for a whopping deficit for the quarter:

“….$150,000 for legal fees involving 24 separate legal actions council is involved in [and] $185,000 economic development overspend…

So we have Wellington lawyers from Sue Grabbit and Run cranking up the fees for a council that is so incompetent and litigious as to get itself involved in “24 separate legal actions” and a council that is so incompetent and so beholding to its mad mayor’s events city meisterplan that it has allowed $185,000 to be tossed at disasters like Mickey’s Boxing Day concert blow-out.

Never slow to spin a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Mickey saw this as a golden opportunity. After months of hysteria about the previous council’s alleged failure to account for the international downturn in forestry returns, Mickey now tells us that the latest “miracle” had a lot to do with the flow-on effects of an upswing in forestry (that HIS council was too incompetent to forecast) and property returns, a lower interest costs:

The improvement from the previous quarter is mainly due to additional dividends from Wanganui District Council Holdings Ltd and forestry, additional income from Council properties and a reduction in interest costs.

And once he’s drawn a discreet veil over the bad news of the management bumbling that led to the deficit in the first place, Mickey returns to his favourite fantasy:

Mayor Laws said that the new managerial and financial structure at Council "has markedly improved internal efficiency and ensured that ratepayers' monies are properly spent. The Audit Office is no longer knocking on Council's doors every five seconds!"

And let’s not overlook this wee caveat emptor:

The surplus is a forecast and could change, depending on events in the final quarter of the financial year.

Meanwhile, the week that was offered one flicker of hope for Wanganui. Barbara Bullock has consistently stood up for truth but has been less than honestly reported by Mickey’s pet Maslin. So let’s remember this moment, when Mas momentarily forgot Mickey’s orders and was suddenly endowed with enough lead in his pencil to quote Cr Bullock’s courageous summary of her stand on the gang patch farce :

“I’m voting against the gang insignia bill. I never approved of it from the start, but I’m quite happy to work with people in the community, with gangs or other offenders.

“But I’m not going to sit hear and listen to the crap you have just put forward that we are making a wrong decision. It is our right as councillors to make our own decisions and I’m not going to be publicly humiliated by you.

“I respect your opinion, but don’t have disrespect for mine,” Cr Bullock said. “I have a lot of support out there for voting against this gang insignia bill.”

There was, unsurprisingly, a simply fantabulous display of butt-covering and mayoral bum-licking by the Vision lackeys and more importantly the likes of Randhir (the Ego) Dahya and Rangi (the Puppet) Wills.

As Mas sadly reported: When it came to the crunch, not surpisingly Crs Higgie, Baker-Hogan, Randhir Dahya, Wills, Lindsay, Dot McKinnon and Mr Laws voted to take the gang insignia bill to Parliament with Crs Westwood, Bullock and Stevens voting against.

Mickey lies; the camera doesn't

When Palmerston North pollsters Competitive Edge ring in the middle of Sunday dinner preparations to ask Watchers who they’d vote for, they’re naturally reluctant to reveal who’s buying their services beyond saying it’s a private company. But dollars to donuts the answer is either Vision, mayoral mystery-man Michael Laws or mayoral wannabe Dot McKinnon … or any combination of the above.

Which has us wondering why the pollsters list of Wanganui mayoral possibilities includes none other than Michael Laws, who’s been riding a wave of spin since announcing last November that he wouldn’t be standing again because his work in Wanganui was done and because, as he whispered to the women’s mags, his latest offspring were entitled to the kind of parenting he notably failed to provide for his first batch.

More recently Dot McKinnon has leapt into the fray and announced she’ll be “seeking the Vision nomination”. The chattering classes were quick to pick trouble at (Vision) mill amid the resounding silence from Mickey and his hired gun Bob Walker. So much for Mickey’s promise to Dotty that she was his chosen one, his anointed successor. Looks like the bridesmaid has been left standing at the altar while her fickle fiancé plans another fling with the voters of Wanganui.

But it’s been quite a roller coaster few weeks for Mickey, who doesn’t really need Competitive Edge, or even his favourite pollster Antoinette Beck, to tell him his honeymoon with long-suffering Wanganui is over. By the end of his dancing nightmare it was clear that he was a white dwarf on the way to becoming a black hole. Not even his frantic publicity campaign or the Cancer Society’s need for funds could persuade people to txt for the desperate non-celeb who proved in his short, doomed run that the camera never lies.

While he managed to provide Woman’s Day readers and Wanganui District Council website surfers with carefully staged happy family images, the judges and viewers of the dancing disaster saw, as one judge pointed out, an over-excited smutty schoolboy alternating with a frustrated and angry loser hurling insults at a visiting judge. Worse, the stills provided by the show’s promoters ensured readers of the country’s main dailies and visitors to the TVNZ website saw the truth about the man.

Then he woke to the news that his Radio Live stablemate Marcus Lush had taken the big prize at the radio awards, and scored the breakfast slot that Mickey has coveted as a possible path out of the 2% ratings doldrums.

We can only presume that by last Saturday night he was dreaming of salvation from his ongoing ratings slide and publicity nightmare. By Monday morning he was telling National Radio that: “Not in my wildest dr …. nightmares” could he have expected a toddler to be slain in an outbreak of gang violence on his patch. After that oh-so-Freudian slip he spent the week making sure his dream of a speedy return to the Six O’Clock News came true. By midweek he was unable to help himself seizing upon the Chron(ic) editor’s rally plans and even snatching her own “scoop” from her.

Now was HIS time to play the statesman. The masterplan: Grab a kid – any kid, even one with the kind of name that’s reduced him in the past to advocating eugenics – and take the high moral ground. Be seen smoking the peace pipe with the kaumatua who’d carpeted him for his racist holiday season headline grabber about third world conditions on River Road. Throw in a good dose of the warm fuzzies. Show up those Watchers who predicted he’d turn Majestic Square into Wanganui’s own Nuremberg stadium. Talk warm … caring … compassionate. Unlike those awful unguarded moments of madness captured by the TV cameras over the past few years, he’d be in control. But as the DominionPost showed its readers the next day, the camera (unless of course its wielded by the photographer to the court of Michael Laws’ ) never lies.

Walking the plank and jumping ship

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Ron Janes, Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws’ erstwhile captain of enterprise – unless of course you’re a victim or member of the clean-up squad after his last foray into public service at the Wanganui Hospital Board. Or you may be one of those who believe that anyone, like Ron and the Visioneers, who thinks dancing with Mickey is the path to glory and riches deserves everything they get when the ship goes down.

You see, poor old Ron’s valiant efforts for the Vision cause was a nice little earner for him as chair of Wanganui Inc, presiding over Mickey’s events city meisterplan and fiddling while the ratepayers’ cash burnt at hopeless mayoral headline grabbers like the Boxing Day concert and mayoral mile.

How frightful, then, for Ron to hear from not one but two Chron reporters (and the sub-editor who gleefully reminded readers that the Chronic had been the first to tell Ron about the mayoral press release on the Council website) that like the souls he’d sacrificed in his slash and burn health system days, he too had been declared surplus to requirements:

THE news that Wanganui District Council has asked for the immediate resignations of Wanganui Inc directors as it takes control of the economic development agency took newly deposed chairman Ron Janes by surprise.

Mr Janes said he was used to business being conducted face-to-face and not in the way he was informed when the Chronicle rang yesterday to get comment.

Mickey knew the Winc game was up before the leftover Christmas turkey was cold, as LawsWatch was told by an anonymii conveniently privy to the innermost workings of the mayoral mind. But we’re now hearing the decision to pull finally pull the plug on Mickey’s merry band of Winc men came from none other special sub committee chair and mayor-in-waiting Dot McKinnon. that’s appropriate because it was Dotty and her sub committee that built the Winc golem in the first place and let it loose in the council coffers.

Moneybags Mickey, meanwhile, rides in on his white horse and tells us that $800,000 will continue to be tossed at ‘economic development’ (read events) by an increasingly well paid branch of the new boys’ network called Wanganui Holdings. But, says Mickey, ‘the estimated savings from the revised structure were between $65,000 and $95,000 a year’. Not even enough to cover the losses on the Boxing Day concert.

As we wait with bated breath for Deputy Dot to start covering herself in glory and pointing her electioneering finger at her ‘triumphs’ at the business end of Vision’s woeful term, it’s also worth noting a wee paragraph buried deep in the Chron(ic) story reporting (ex) Chairman Janes’s surprise at not being told he’d been given the boot:

Former director Nygllhuw Morris had already resigned two weeks previously: “I think Winc will be able to move forward, and I totally support them.”

So we can assume that Mickey had a word with his buddy Nygllyhuw, even if he didn’t have the bottle to pick up the phone and ring Ron. And Nygllhuw, doubtless with an eye to candidate nomination day, decided to jump the Winc ship in timely fashion without waiting for Dotty to march him down the gangplank. Or perhaps he was just too busy working on dottyandnygllhuw.co.nz, the sequel to michaelandlauren.co.nz which undoubtedly ranks as his greatest tribute so far to the fast-fading glory of Mickey Mayor.