On the horns of a dilemma: Mt Albert by-election
May 20, 2009 2 Comments
Its by-election time in Mt Albert and I have the very great joy of choosing a candidate to vote for. I generally prevaricate a little before casting my 3 yearly vote in a general election, but this by-election is proving to be quite the dilemma. I really am having difficulty making up my mind. At the crux of the problem is this: the candidate I originally thought I would vote for turns out to be a bumbling idiot.
I had probably decided to vote for Melissa Lee having never actually heard her speak (which isn’t a great way to decide I’ll admit, I was being lazy). Now that she has opened her mouth all she has done is stick both feet in it, as well as digging herself new and larger holes every other day. She is making such a mess of this election campaign that she may have actually singlehandedly ruined her entire political career in the last two weeks. Rather than being seen as a potential high-flyer in the National government, she may emerge from the Mt Albert by-election consigned to the political wilderness.
Before Melissa Lee was offically selected as the National Party candidate for the Mt Albert electorate, displacing the candidate at the last two general elections Ravi Musuku, she made her first mistake by blabbing all over the press about the likelyhood of a motorway blasting its way through the electorate she was trying to win.
As if that wasn’t enough, she has since insulted everyone who lives in South Auckland by calling them criminals, suggested that a motorway through Mt Albert will be a good thing as it will divert these criminals to West Auckland, had a complete brain melt-down on national TV during which she tried three times to complete a sentence but failed, refused to attend a public candidate’s debate on the grounds she didn’t get “enough notice” (ie, running scared), and this morning had a disasterous performance at Auckland University that included being booed and heckled, the students passing a motion that she is racist, and answered the boos with the line “You guys are obviously students and do not watch television.”
A hostile audience must be scary, but lets face it, she’s now got plenty of experience with hostility and with more than 3 weeks until the by-election, she going to get plenty more. Suggesting that students don’t watch TV is mad.
The other main rivals are David Shearer (he could get my vote but he is Labour and I am sick of Labour), Russell Norman, the Green Candidate (he annoys me on so many levels there is no space to list them now), and ACT candidate John Boscawen (very wealthy, right wing, therefore my inner socialist probably won’t allow me to vote for him).
I value my vote and want to use it wisely, and cannot even consider not using it at all but I am stuck: who shall I vote for?? Answers on the back of a postcard please.
Its been forever since I posted, so I’ll try to do better in future.
Go with Boscawen.
In fact, see if you can meet him over the next few weeks and ask him about his plans for reforming eye surgery in New Zealand. I was very impressed by what he had to say about that.
I think you should vote for the candidate that most deserves support, regardless of what party they are from. This seat will be won by Labour, regardless of what you do, so you might as well vote for the best person.
I think this is David Shearer. He comes across as intelligent and likely to be a good local MP, even if as an opposition member it is hard to make much impact. Being sick of Labour shouldn’t matter here, it’s the party vote that matters to Labour at the next election, and Shearer being in won’t change that much.
You couldn’t vote for Lee now, she’ll have even less sway in Wellington than Shearer, Key will put her in a cupboard somewhere for the next two years. And the rest of them are single issue nutters, do you really want Rodney and Roger to have the idea that people support their ideologue candidates?