PARTIES AND POLICIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26621, 18 November 1947, Page 4

PARTIES AND POLICIES

However much the introduction of narrow, party politics into local body elections might be deplored, the fact is only too apparent that the Labour Party is determined on a policy of forcing the issue at tomorrow’s poll on a strictly party basis. Ah adamant demand on party loyalties has been the keynote of its campaign, to the comparative disregard of the abilities of its candidates to fulfil the important positions for which they offer themselves. In Parliament, where the sorry spectacle is daily presented of a few political nincompoops giving power to the Socialist arm by a mechanical obedience to the Party whips, this rigid subjection to party discipline is odious enough. It has led to the partitioning of the whole country into mutually antagonistic sections on all matters of national interest, and if permitted to dominate local body politics it will intensify the disruption. But since the situation has been forced on the . public, it has to be faced, and citizens before they go to the polls to-morrow should make a careful evaluation of the nature of the political ideologies that have been postulated during the campaign. The' Labour Party which puts forward candidates for the local body elections is composed of the same elements as those of the Government now in power, a Government which is pledged to a policy of complete Socialism and is already taxing the workers of this country on an exorbitant and unprecedented scale in order to support the clumsy bureaucratic structure that is, presumably, to be the instrument by which Socialism is to be administered. The opposition that half the European voters in the Dominion have expressed to this policy has been ignored in contemptuous fashion and in almost all major matters of policy the preconceived Socialist verdict lias been ruthlessly imposed. These are the broader issues that are involved in to-morrow’s election, when the people will have to decide whether their local affairs are to be administered by a political party or by men who offer their talents in the public interest. The total /of votes cast will be regarded as a guide to national opinion on wider political questions than the conduct of local body affairs, and for that reason electors should consider seriously the extent to which they can permit the total of their votes for local body candidates to be construed as offering an excuse for the Government to maintain its precarious position of power.