The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1935. PREPARING FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 101, 23 January 1935, Page 8

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1935. PREPARING FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION

+ Far-seeing people are turning their thoughts to the General Election which must be held this year, although probably it will not be held until late in the year. For more than three yeais the avo Government parties have put party behind them and bent then even effort to assist the restoration of the national finances and the national economic life. They have been consistently and sometimes petulantly opposed within Parliament, and subjected outside to. a good deal oi ill-informed criticism —which they foresaw, but which in the main has not turned them from their course of doing what they conceived to be in the best interests of the country as a whole irrespective ot interested protests. . The Government has been unpopular because it has had tlie courage to try to do something, and in the doing has made some mistakes. The Opposition is neither popular.nor unpopular, for it has done nothing positive by which it can .be judged.. But by every legitimate electioneering device the Opposition is striving to capitalise for its advantage the unpopularity of the Government—and so fai the Government does not appear to be worrying in the slightest. . This unconcern has its admirable side. “We were elected to do this job for New Zealand,” Ministers say, in effect, “and we are doing it. We have no time to talk party politics. We agreed to sink party because of the need for national unity.' If others think -.party of more importance than their country, that is their affair and their misfortune. We have bigger fish to fry.” Ministers have stated their position in almost those words, and have refused to listen to reports of hostile electioneering, not only by the Opposition but also by all manner of new groups in the country. Men who talk like this, and especially when their actions endorse their words, command respect. They are travelling the path that leads from politics to statesmanship. Statesmanship, however,' is not easily recognisable as such by every voter, and in the heat of an election campaign the self-saciificing spirit that has placed national above personal interests is liable to be misrepresented, either accidentally or deliberately.. For the . country s sake, therefore, more even than for their own, Ministers will shortly have to bestir themselves to rebut false accounts of their administration, to outline the several steps in the reconstruction policy they have put into operation, and —this being the vital part —to tell the country their proposals for the future. The average elector is a very fairminded fellow. He has reviled the Government these last few years, but he is coming to see now that what it has done was generally for the best, and he is disposed to forget and forgive the accompanying mistakes. But before he does so he will wish to know what to expect next Parliament. He is looking forward, not backward. The Opposition will do its level best to persuade' him that the past and not the future is what matters —that the Coalition parties are to be judged on the Government’s record and not on their plans for the next stage ahead. But •the elector knows better. The immediate past has. not. been pleasant for him, and he much prefers to put it out of his. mind. Plad the Government been a failure he could not have forgiven it; but when its main line of advance has been proved sound he is not in a mood to quibble about details. So he looks forward, and to-day is looking hopefully to the Government for a lead.