No really. In New Zealand.
On the face of it you have to say that Labour did in fact buy the election. The results as anyone who followed it can tell you were knife edge. Indeed we had to wait for the special votes to be counted before we knew who had won.
That winning margin? Just 2%
So when we find that Labour has overspent their campaign budget by 17% you don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to do the maths.
Labour has now taken the position that the laws regulating spending are “outdated”. Which is a bloody arogant way of saying they don’t suit Labour so they’ll ignore them.
Which isn’t all they ignored. National protested at the exclusion of Labours “Pledge Cards” from the budget and the Electorial Office advised PRIOR to the election that they were indeed part of the expenditure. Labour simply ignored this and kept on spending.
Spending our money. Thats right, more taxpayer dollars added to the complusary Union Fees and the free pool a workers for the “Labour Letter Factory” as they called where state servants were used to stuff envolopes. Added to this having been caught out with hospitals handing out political material in waiting rooms and having been instructed to remove it by the SSC it is very clear that there are NO rules that Labour will recognise when it comes to grasping onto power.
This is just one of the reasons that I felt that all of the American Left’s cries of stolen elections was more about projection than anything else. When you are willing to do anything just for the sake of winning, you think everyone has the same inclination.
February 10th, 2006 | International Politics, Partisan Hacking, Politics