Will John Key do the dirty on August 25th?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
19
12

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All eyes now will be on Bulk Day, August 25th. That’s the deadline for registered political parties to bulk nominate their electorate candidates to the Electoral Commission. If National are sensing danger in the election, that is when they will pull Goldsmith off the ballot and allow ACT an easy run into Parliament.

The problem with pulling that kind of stunt is that it smacks of political desperation and it robs voters of their vote. Political parties can recommend tactics, can recommend strategy, can recommend preferences, but at the ballot box it is the individual’s right to vote whoever they wish. Removing your candidate from the ballot box altogether forces the voters hands and is a genuine manipulation of the process.

How desperate would Key need to be to take such steps?

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19 COMMENTS

  1. Power doesn’t care what people think of it – It cares about holding power. Of course he’ll do it if he thinks he needs to. Let’s just hope his unbridled ego gets the better of him.

    • But you have to consider, Key is the Poker face king, he might want to bluff it out… but they dont seem to be doing too well at the moment, so it would be a desperate move on the Nats part.

  2. Manipulating the electoral system is illegal… We aren’t allowed to attempt it so why should a political party… and three and a half weeks out from a general election is to me tampering… The UN send in “observers” in some countries!!!

    • It is technically ‘legal’, so there is nothing in law to stop him doing it, but there might be a cost to the Natz in support, and not just in Epsom, but over the whole country, if some more people become annoyed enough at the blatant manipulation to change their votes.

      Which, ironically, is the reason that he gave for not doing a sweetheart deal with Crazy Colin, so, doing one for ACT will make him look like a real two-faced hypocrite, which of course is exactly what he is.

      • Yeah but surely we can trust him and his good mates in the GSCB ,Immigration Dept , NSA , Five Eyes Network , SIS , and Mr Obama to tell us the truth and be shining examples of the law and its application towards all those ‘nasty’ baddies???

        Cant we?…..

        Then again … I guess the only way ‘PIGS FLY’ these days is on a military aircraft into NZ in the middle of the night to avoid public scrutiny…….hmmmmm…

  3. Just 18 days and we will know if the Nats are spooked whatever the public polls are indicating.

    It will be a very bad look for Key if one or more candidates are pulled so unless things are dire it won’t happen.

    While the lidless eye looks in the direction of Epsom, what about the Clutha Southland Nat being pulled for ex Fed Farmers Don Nicholson standing for ACT? Nats could do that under the radar almost and still hope Goldsmith misses in Epsom.

    • Blatant PR. A desperate appeal to young voters. So many smiley photos of Key and none of opposition. Typical ploy from the embedded NZ Herald and rest of mainstream media.

  5. If act don’t get in who are we going to laugh at for the next three years, I get the feeling acts new leader will make his predecessors look like sane balanced people

  6. John Key and his Nat mob of shysters are bedfellows with dodgy manipulative maneuvers, legal or not!

    So tampering with the electoral system to suit himself will be easy peasy for Key! It’s what comes naturally to him and his bent Nat gang!

  7. The MMP review recommendations would have taken care of this had the govt had not so arrogantly just shoved them aside.
    Implemented, they would have made it totally not worth while for these rortous deals to take place.
    That is just one thing that irritates the shit out of me about the govt we currently have, but Internet/Mana you may have just done enough to swing the eheh eheh voters back to them with that youtube stunt with the drunken students.
    Good onyer

    • Well……………..i think we need to calm down abit about ‘ drunken’ students so eloquently expressing disdain for the little golem who heads the National party…the succinctness of their collective message is the striking thing….and it didnt cost them a cent in spin doctors fees as well!!

      I couldnt think of a more apt election slogan , myself , to be honest…

      But then again..perhaps we could go back to the 1930’s when we had food riots in Queen Street , Auckland…perhaps thats a bit less unseemly than the ‘F’ word being used by students….

      It certainly looks like its heading that way- thank goodness for students using the F word to prevent that happening!!!

      Or perhaps we could have more politicians having fisticuffs in parliament buildings for the comic relief value…

      If all the people in this country have got to concern and focus themselves on is a bunch of students being passionate about politics -then stamping on them when it seems they are becoming a threat to the comfort of their established, impenetrable monetarist order…

      Then we are a sad, petty little nothing country indeed…

  8. That would be a desperate move indeed ED40. Like yesterday’s nasty attack on Kim Dot Com and the Internet/Mana Party coalition as a smokescreen to cover up any fallout from the major gaffe of the day before belonging to John Key where he gave Laila Harre the ultimate insult a woman can receive by starting the rumour that she slept her way to the top by having Kim Dot Com as her “sugar daddy”.
    I am still burning with righteous indignation myself over this snide comment and it wasn’t even said about me so I can’t even begin to imagine how Ms Harre, a woman I have long admired, must be feeling. Or how her husband feels for that matter over this contemptuous and spiteful attack on his wife by no less a person than the Prime Minister of our country himself.
    John Key has truly lost the plot here IMHO and appears to have completely forgotten the fact that a great many of his fans ARE WOMEN. As any adult female and adult male could tell you, there are certainly SOME women who manipulate and dominate using their wicked feminine wiles. Yes, unfortunately they are out there. (Don’t kill the messenger please).
    These irritating disgraces to their sex are very much in the minority however and are decidedly unpopular with other women who, like Laila Harre, prefer to indulge in decorum and hard yakka over a long period of time in order to attain the heights they seek in whatever field of endeavour they choose.
    Obviously, once rumours start it is extremely difficult to disprove them and John Key, with his impressive people skills and innate shrewdness will have known this. What a low blow from John Key! I used to like him too. Very disappointing.
    And main stream media commentators can say as often as they like that “sugar daddy” can simply mean a wealthy benefactor or mentor for someone but we the people are not fooled. A sugar daddy relationship, as the average person immediately understands, refers to one between a male and a female and is mostly if not exclusively based on mutual favours that are sexual in nature, the details negotiated by the individuals involved in the tawdry affair.
    I ask you, how would John Key feel if some sleazebag appeared in the media claiming that say, Bronagh Key would not have passed her university exams except for the “A for a lay” arrangement she had made with one of her lecturers? Or perhaps that Mr Key’s mother had provided sexual favours to the headmaster of his high school in order for him to be advantaged somehow? Mr Key would be highly offended and rightly so.
    So what was he thinking when he said what he did about Ms Harre and Kim Dot Com? Apart from anything else, if Ms Harre has accepted a wonderful career related opportunity she was offered, as indeed she has done, what is wrong with that? John Key has certainly accepted great career offers in his time hasn’t he and who wouldn’t? He has no business making comments about female politicians and so-called sugar daddy relationships and I personally predict that he will come to rue the day he ever opened his mouth and let these choice morsels of pure poison fall from his lips.
    This is the gutter-dwelling level of the attack bomb that Mr Key has oh-so-flippantly tossed into the Internet/Mana Party lap. This latest crude and especially nasty example by sound bite from the Big Boss Man himself is a timeworn accusatory technique that has been used to discredit women for untold years with often effectively deadly results. This is New Zealand Mr Key, where women were the first in the world to be given the vote and where attitudes like yours that you have now clearly proved to us all that you have, will not cut the mustard in 2014. No wonder so many of the public think you are out of touch with the average New Zealander.
    As for Ms Harre, if I was her I would sue Mr Key for defamation.

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