UNDER WHICH FLAG?

Evening Star, Issue 22443, 14 September 1936, Page 13

UNDER WHICH FLAG?

MINISTER ON NATIONAL CANDIDATE STRANGE MASQUERADE (Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, September 13. Caustic comment on the past and present political affiliations of - Mr F. VV. Doidgo, National Party candidate for tho Manukau seat, was made by the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) in an address at Ellerslie. “1 am trying to understand what he is up to, what he stands for, what new party he belongs to, and what people belong to it, said the Minister. “Is it the National Party, the Democrat Party, or tho Doidge Party? 1 confess I am mystified, and 1 believe the electors are mystified, too. Mr Doidgo started as a Democrat, but the Democrats no longer exist. They were like the boy who stood on the burning deck. The deck has disappeared under them, and now they keep bobbing up under. all sorts of names. What I would like to know is ; Is Mr Doidge standing as a candidate of the National Party ? Is he its leader or not? It seems to me that all want to be leaders—Mr Forbes, Mr Coates, Mr Poison, and Mr Broadfoot. They are like the Portuguese army, all officers and no rank and file. What a more, there is not likely to be any rank and file. Has Mr Doidge the confidence of Mr Forbes as Leader of the Opposition, or of Mr Coates? If not, who is behind him?” Mr Fraser went on to say that apparently there was a general rallying of the reactionary forces behind Mr Doidge, but he wanted to know . what party they represented. Did Mr Doidge support Mr Forbes and Mr Coates in their attitude to the Labour policy, or was he a Democrat masquerading under the name of Nationalist? No word had come from Mr Forbes or Mr Coates, and it was natural to ask whether they were supporting him. Presumably Mr Doidge did not expect their support in view of the things he had said about them in the RotOrua 'campaign. Mr Fraser quoted a number of newspaper extracts, in which Mr Doidge was' reported 'to have said that Mr Forbes was being treated as a political nonentity and a rubber stamp, that New Zealand had been under Soviet rule and Mr Coates was head -of the Soviet, and that he wished he could relegate both to a long political retirement on the hardest back benches in the House. .

Mr Fraser also quoted from an article by Mr Doidge in ‘ Smith’s Weekly ’ to the effect that Labour had gained power ■ because the electors were-determined to rid. themselves of the Forbes-Coates Administration, and that if Mr Savage turned the key on Parliament like Cromwell and gave the country a legislative rest for three years his name would be for ever blessed.

“ 'x'iien, why does he want to get into Parliament?” asked Mr Fraser. “It is an insult to the intelligence of the electors to ask them to vote for something in which he doesn’t himself believe.”