Winston Peters stands down amid fraud-squad investigation
That’s it: the Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet, Winston Peters, has stepped down temporarily while the Serious Fraud Office investigates whether funds donated to his political party, New Zealand First, were used as intended.
The pressure has mounted for weeks on Peters, and on PM Helen Clark to suspend him.
It is a rare slip-up for the former National politician-turned-Labour ally who has relied on skilful media manipulation for most of his career.
Images of Peters holding up a ‘No’ sign some months ago in denying journalists’ allegations of his receiving and failing to declare political-party donations from businessman Owen Glenn may haunt him.
The Glenn matter is under a separate parliamentary privileges’ investigation.
It was reported in the Australian-owned Fairfax Press, which owns The Dominion Post newspaper: ‘[Peters] said unnamed groups were organising a plot against him and that the SFO was part of it.
‘He said if the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had talked to him he would have convinced them in five minutes that he was not breaking the law.
‘He told Radio New Zealand that The Dominion Post was part of the “malevolent planning strategy” and he would not stand down in the face of a “kangaroo court of public opinion, organised by the media in this country and others.”’
There are agenda at certain publications, but the numerous assaults on Peters this year will be the hardest for him to fight.
Another question is whether opposition parties can capitalize from the fiasco. National so far has failed to criticize Peters more strongly than Rodney Hide, the leader of the minor right-wing party, ACT.
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Being entirely ignorant of the reputations of parties, candidates, delegates and so on, of NZ', I'm reminded of my political awareness prior to 9/11/01 and even prior to joining my church.
I knew it mattered, but I had no clue who or what to believe or even how to find out. Here, we can guess this one's right or that one's right and that is the power on which he is being prosecuted. Guesses, and that's what he claims. But then when the investigation is done, we may find that he is indeed guilty as hell.
Unfortunately with positions of power, we have to decide whether to leave them in authority while they're investigated and risk them screwing us even harder or do we yank them out of office on the authority of doubt and have challengers continually keeping the leadership weak and on defense?
You are right that the investigation will reveal evidence one way or another but I don’t have enough faith in the system to believe he will be found guilty. Even if impropriety is covered, the man is Teflon-coated (he has carried the party single-handedly) and knows how to spin the matters in his favour, and you can bet there will be a fall guy.
However, I wonder if this is the end of New Zealand First as a party. Peters does not even hold his electorate but by virtue of being its leader, gets a seat due to our proportional-representation system (à la Germany). The incident might put paid to votes that help push New Zealand First above the 5 per cent threshold that our system requires a party to have before it has parliamentary representation.
PM Clark probably held out as long as she could and I bet she had asked Peters to stand down when the situation no longer seemed tenable for him and, by association, the ruling Labour party. The good thing with Labour is because Peters is of a different party (in a coalition), she has been able to stay relatively clean, plus the Opposition (unlike minor party leader Rodney Hide) has not been particularly good at making political capital on the matter—which makes me wonder if they, too, have skeletons in the closet.
Skeletons are not always skeletons. Reputations live and die on rumors. A week leader would allow fear of tarnish and fake skeletons prevent him from fighting for what he believes. I say fire the weak ones and hire the risk takers, the movers and the shakers. If reputation is all they have to throw at my guys then let my guys fight until they are irrelevant then fire them and hire the next generation of movers and shakers. They're not supposed to be up there to make a career. They're supposed to be up there fighting for something bigger than themselves. If he wants a career, he should go get a real job. I'm sure with all their connections they could get a nice cushy governmental appointment as a bureaucrat. Or they could go back to being lawyers. Seems to be plenty of money in that field. Better yet, retire and write a book. We don't need anymore lawyers.