Thursday 31 August 2017

Tales From A Possible Future: The "Mother Of All Scandals" Breaks.

The Finger Of Blame: What seemed to stick in the craw of most voters, however, was the Government’s extraordinary hypocrisy. Through their various agents and mouthpieces, they had viciously denounced an Opposition politician who had admitted to committing a series of relatively minor transgressions in her youth. And yet, even as this Opposition politician was being hounded out of Parliament, the governing party was moving heaven and earth to prevent the much more serious transgressions of one of its own from reaching the ears of the public before polling-day.
 
THE STORY APPEARED FIRST on an offshore blog. After that, not even the best legal brains at Crown Law could prevent the voters from learning about the “Mother of All Scandals”. The Internet, as always, prevailed over the frantic machinations of desperate politicians.
 
As details of the scandal spread, the mainstream news media was obliged to engage in some legal manoeuvring of its own. Lawyers for both the electronic and print media argued that the legal injunctions preventing them from broadcasting and/or publishing what was by now a huge story were contrary to the public interest. With a general election just days away, matters having a material bearing on the Government’s fitness to go on governing were unable to be debated in a rational and professional fashion. Instead, voters were being regaled with rumour, innuendo and the far-from-reliable outpourings of “citizen journalism”.

The horse having well-and-truly bolted, the judiciary was disposed to agree with the mainstream media, and the injunctions preventing any and all reporting of the Mother of All Scandals were lifted.
 
The Cabinet Minister at the centre of the scandal released a brief statement announcing his immediate resignation from both the Cabinet and Parliament and went to ground. It was not enough. The focus of the scandal had already shifted away from the disgraced Cabinet Minister. All of the journalists’ investigative powers were now bent on exposing the extraordinary measures the Government had been willing to countenance in order to kill the story.
 
The most damning of these involved the deliberate leaking of confidential information about a senior politician’s financial affairs as part of a broader “strategy of distraction”. Equally shocking was the discovery that an alarming number of public servants had aided and abetted the Government’s strategy.
 
Political scientists debated the ultimate impact of the scandal on the Government’s electoral fortunes. Some pointed to the consequences of a series of similar revelations published three years earlier. On that occasion, they argued, Government supporters had angrily rejected the accusations of impropriety directed at the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues, and rallied to their defence. It was the contention of these experts that, far from damaging the Government, the Mother of All Scandals would actually generate a surge towards the party in power.
 
Others objected that, in terms of both its scale and seriousness, the Mother of All Scandals – and its high-level cover-up – posed a much graver threat to the survival of the Government. For even the most fanatical supporters of the incumbent party, the behaviour of all those involved would likely prove very hard to forgive.
 
What seemed to stick in the craw of most voters, however, was the Government’s extraordinary hypocrisy. Through their various agents and mouthpieces, they had viciously denounced an Opposition politician who had admitted to committing a series of relatively minor transgressions in her youth. And yet, even as this Opposition politician was being hounded out of Parliament, the governing party was moving heaven and earth to prevent the much more serious transgressions of one of its own from reaching the ears of the public before polling-day.
 
Some pundits would later discount the Mother of All Scandals as a major contributor to the governing party’s startling electoral defeat. They would argue that, after three terms in office, it would have taken a small miracle to secure their re-election to a fourth. To a great many ordinary voters, however, the Mother of All Scandals was the small miracle that ushered in a younger, fresher and ethically far-superior progressive government.
 
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 30 August 2017.

7 comments:

Kat said...

"The Cabinet Minister at the centre of the scandal released a brief statement announcing his immediate resignation from both the Cabinet and Parliament and went to ground".

Most likely that should read..............her immediate resignation.......

Anonymous said...

I didn't need to wonder to long to take a stab at who is the mysterious Minister..
If only this situation would come to reality.

Then, Bingo..

thesorrowandthepity said...

A politician did something as a young mother, admitted it, & then gets stoned by the same media that said nothing about the consultancy fees the present government paid to get Mighty River Power floated.
The Lange government was capable of setting up floats for companies all on their own. Yet this present government couldn't do that; either the finance minister (now the PM) didn't have the competency to carry out the task... or otherwise perhaps they allowed a private company to charge an exorbitant fee for the service (honestly look up how much was they charged!) & that perhaps maybe one day we'll see some of those same National cabinet ministers who had insufficient skills to setup a public float doing some "consultancy work" for the same private firm after they've left politics. On the scale of things how much the NZ taxpayers were gouged by the MRP GPO is somewhat a little larger I'd say than a solo mum trying to put bread on the table

pat said...

damn....am unable to find any offshore sites that enlighten.....guess Ill have to hope for that lifted injunction

Guerilla Surgeon said...

https://horizonpoll.co.nz/page/474/new-zealand?gtid=0530048851276MTU

More poll results. I'm not sure why they keep sending me these, or if anyone else knows about them – I presume they do. But interesting anyway.

btb said...

It's a bait and switch for sure. Who benefits from this simple trick? The next National party leader that's who. Paula? Judith? Who knows? Will it float when its dead?

Richard Mayson said...

It's taken less than an hour to pierce the intentional fog, but I too have come to btb's conclusion. Anecdotal evidence and patterns of historical behavior do point to P or J or both. Certainly down here in capital buzz politico land this view is gaining currency, and given that Key sold out to Brash's leadership bid in 2005 by betraying English may be we've come full circle with Bill again being the victim?