The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1918 THE WELLINGTON CENTRAL ELECTION.

Taihape Daily Times, 10 September 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1918 THE WELLINGTON CENTRAL ELECTION.

(With which is Incorporated The X&ihape Post and Walcmriao News)..

The seat in Parliament for Wellington Central, to which the late Mr. Robert Fletcher had been elected, is proving a conundrum which very many people shy at guessing. Tide question is, what xjolitical party will win the seat and who is the man strong enough to secure the greatest number of votes? Of course, the late Member being a Liberal, Sir Joseph Ward will, by the provisions of the political truce made when the National Government came into existence, have the selection of the Liberal candidate, or, rather, in his absence the Hon. W. D. S. MacDonald, as leader of the Liberal Party in Sir Joseph Ward’s absence will exercise that understood right. Politics in Wellington are at this moment a much mixed and unknowable quantity the only party having any real organisation being that of labour. All other sections of people arc doing too well well to bother about politics, therefore, labour is sure to prove somewhat troublesome in Mr. MacDonald’s first exercise of real party power. It was the labour vote that gave the late Member such a comfortable and decisive majority when he was elected, but there is no candidate visible at the present time that can claim or carry the support the late Robert Fletcher was accorded. Unfortunately, this byelection comes at a time when conflicting interests are particularly strong, and it is obvious that, despite political party arrangements, prohibitionists and the Trade will naturally vote for the candidate whose thoughts run parallel with theirs. The education question will influence a much greater number of votes than many people expect, and with local matters such as a threatened tramway strike, at fever heat, it is safe to venture the opinion that the Wellington Central by-election is a totally unknown quantity. The Representative Committee of Labour has' put labour machinery in motion for selecting a candidate, beyond this the name of Mr P. J. O’Regan has been mentioned, and the Social Democrats arc actively contemplating the putting up of a candidate of their own. The Hon. Mr. MacDonald is doubtlessly busying himself with the Liberal elements in the constituency, but it is obvious that he has a somewhat troublesome task, and it seems that he will experience the folly of failing to keep party organisation up to some degree of potentiality. At present there is no man in sight that is likely to secure a victory over any candidate a labour and socialism combination may elect to support. Politcs generally are not being altogether shelved in some other parts of the Dominion; the new electoral constituencies are so widely different as to the preponderance of political thought and interest, brought about by the changed electoral boundaries, that localities suffering from the change, and from the movement of settlement and population, are organising and scheming to avoid losing the position, politically, they hitherto occupied. It is freely rumoured that huge sums of money are already being placed at the disposal of organisers, and that in our .own electorate, to be known In future as the Rangie* electorate, the political battle has begun. There is a possibility, perhaps a probability, that a general election will become necessary in the near future, and it is as well that the Talhape district, which is the centre of the new constituency, should be on the alert to avoid 'becoming the victim of strategy and organisation de’•’eloping elsewhere.