WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 5 October 1927, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE REFORM REVERSE. ITS SIGNIFICANCE. (Special to “ Guardian.”) WELLINGTON, Oct. 3. Now that the newspapers have done their best to explain the reverse suffered by the Reform Party in the Raglan by-election, and the party itself has striven to belittle the .success of Labour, it is plain for everybody to see that the Government has .sustained a very disconcerting; rebuff in one of the strongest ol its strongholds. The local papers urged half a dozen excuses for the failure oi the Government's candidate, in which, most ungraciously. the inexperience and incapacity of the poor man himself was included; but their conclusions, to put it mildly, were ludicrously inconsistent with the obvious facts. The total votes polled at the by-election last week were 1*221 fewer than the total polled at the general election in 1025, the figures falling irom 7271 to 6050, the total votes cast for the Reform candidate declining by 2445 and the votes for the three candidates of the other three parties represented at the general election increasing by 1028. In addition to the Labour, Liberal and Country Party candidates there was an Independent Reform candidate in the field last- week and the 198 votes east for this gentleman brought the total votes arrayed against the selected Reform candidate up to 4025, leaving the Government’s nominee in a minortiy of *2OOO, or with little more than onethird of the votes polled.

A LAME EXCUSE. Thu ” Evening Post,” with less than its usual perception and no logic at; all. declared, in effect, that the return! of the Labour candidate was due to j the miscarriage of a defective system, of election. “Either on a second ballot, with which at the instance of Sir Joseph Ward the country experimented in 1903 and 1911, it said, “or under the proportional system which the Labour Party favours, the victory of the Reform candidate would have

been certain.” The “Post” assumes] of course, that if there bad been no Liberal candidate in the field the 109.> supporters of -Mr Parker would have cast their votes- for the Reform candidate ; but no one who lias followed the trend of party feeling in the country during the last year or two will assume anything of the kind. Observant people know better. Nor would the votes for the Country Party or the Independent candidate have passed automatically to the Reform candidate had either of these gentlemen or both of them elected to retire. Three or four weeks ago a bank manager in the Waikato district gave it as bis considered opinion that a Labour Government would do more for the men on the land than the present Government was doing. A responsible authority of this kind would know his audience. THE PRIME .MINISTER'S OPTIMISM The statement by the Prime Minister to the press on the day following the election was characteristic of the delightful optimist who is content to wait with micawberian complacency for something to turn up. “ One result of the Raglan by-election,” Mr Coates told the reporters, “is due to vote splitting on the part of those opposed to tiie policy of the Labour Party. The aggregate of the votes east against the successful Labour candidate shows that the great majority in the electorate are definitely opposed to the prin-1 ciples and policy of the Labonr-Soeial-iscs. The seat lias gone to the Labour j Party on a minority vote, but I predict with confidence that to-day’s ver-j diet will be reversed at the General

Election, provided that there are not too many candidates anxious to demonstrate their opposition to tbe principles of tbe Socialistic Party. I feel sure that one result of this contest will be to consolidate the forces in tlie community which are definitely opposed to the platform of the Labour Party.” These are very plausible generalities, but they do not account for the decline of the Reform vote in less than two years by 2145, from 1170 to 2025, nor do they make it at all clear why the Liberals and the Country Party should efface themselves for the purpose of staying the debacle. j

VOTE SPLITLING. I The Prime Minister and his colleagues liave no more right to he ing out against vote-splitting than have the local papers. Mr Coates must he aware that it was a minorityj of the electors of the "Dominion that gave him his overwhelming majority in the present ITosue of Representatives, and lie cannot have forgotten that only a week ago he and his big, battalions arrayed themselves against a hill, introduced by Mr J. McCombs, the Labour member for Lyttelton, which aimed at preventing the wastage of votes he now professes to deplore.

The Hon. F. J. Rolleston, the Attor-ney-General, and Mr J. A. Young, the Minister of Health, with a somewhat broader conception of popular representation than had their chief, dared to vote for the principle of Mr McCombs’ bill, and for their courage were severely taken to task by the

“ Dominion,” which went the length of implying that they had been disloyal to their party. For the Prime Minister himself there always is the excuse that he has not yet made himself acquainted with the details of more than one system of election and that the less chivalrous members of his party prefer the bridge that lias earned them safely over an election to one that might test their right of passage more severely.