THE WELLINGTON MAYORALTY. Our One Hope of Salvation.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 194, 19 March 1904, Page 6

THE WELLINGTON MAYORALTY. Our One Hope of Salvation.

NOW that the mayoral year is fast running out, the "Post" is once more down on its knees, begging Mr. Aitken, with streaming eyes and voice broken with sobs, for God's sake to take on the mayoralty for a fifth term. He is the one righteous man m this populous community, and if he won't stand by us we are bound to go headlong to perdition. That is the burden of the "Post's" whining supplication. • • • Things must really have come to a -very pretty pass in Wellington if its good government and safe guidance depend entirely upon one man. In such an event, the best thing would be to make Mr. Aitken perpetual Mayor, and abolish the Cit- Council altogether, for he alone is possessed of integrity, wisdom, prescience — our only successful and honourable man ox business, the only self-sacrificing devotee of religious and philanthropic work, the only citizen whom the breath of scandal has never touched. • • • Now, we are not so far gone m fulsome idolatry as to credit any man with a local monopoly of all these lefty, high-soundmg attributes. Nor is Wellington, we take it, so lost to self-respect as to grovel at the feet of Mr. John G. W. Aitken, and abjectly implore him to take compassion on it, relinquish h.s alleged intention to retire, and go in for a fifth year of office On the contrary, we maintain it will be a precious good thing for the city to have a change of Mayor. Everybody knows that his present Worship is a man of probity and substance m the community He is a good, sensible, cautious Scotch citizen, but awfully slow-going in his official methods, and certainly by no means brilliant. To insinuate that he is the only reliable or righteous man that we possess is an insult to the community, and, of course, the very thinnest of claptrap. * * * The "Post" says that tramway municipahsation, the Town Hall, and Greater Wellington are some of Mayor Aitken's achievements. Let us smile. There are some otner achievements it has not catalogued. What about the Byko Corner muddle, the Kent Terrace bungle, the scamping of the wood-paving project, the postponement to the Greek Kalends of the water supply poll? We don't say he achieved them, but they have all happened under Mayor Aitken's blissful regime, and while he has been chief executive officer. • • • Then, a year ago the City Council gave authority for a poll of the ratepayers to be taken on the question of completing Kelburne Park. Why has nothing been done ? The "Post" also makes a great song about Miramar, and says it would not have been lost if Mr. Aitken could have had his way. Which reminds us that last session a bill was passed through Parliament to enable a poll of the ratepayers to be taken on the question whether a loan should be raised to extend the tramway to Miramar, in order to take up the free-gift offer of forty-eight and a-half acres of the flat as a people's park and recreation ground. Many months ago the Council authorised that poll to be taken, and yet nothing has been done. It looks very liLe as if this rare chance is going to be missed likewise through the "wait a wee" policy.

We have come to the conclusion that Mayor Aitken is too slow for Wellington, and that he hasn't time enough for civic affairs. It is also our firm conviction that it is a wrong principle to keep a mayor m office for more than two successive terms Regular infusion of new blood is desirable. Besides, it is only fair that these positions of honour should go round. There are men in the City Council who were labouring there long before Mr. Aitken was dragged out of his office, or was even thought of as a possible mayor. J * * * Why not give them a chance? They are familiar with civic affairs. They have borne the heat and burden of the day. They possess the confidence of the citizens, and they are entitled to promotion to the higher office of mayor. In short, there is an abundance of most excellent potential mayors m our midst. Mr. Aitken may retire after his four years' occupancy of the chair without the city going straight to rack and rum. In spite of the "Post's" hysterical fears and whimpering supplications to Mr. Aitken. Wellington can take care of itself.