The Syndrome of Embarrassing Advocates
You have to spare a thought for our hapless Foreign Minister, Winston Peters. Winnie (a nickname referring to his excessive love of horse racing) has for some strange reason singled out Russia as a country with which New Zealand very definitely needs to have a Free Trade Agreement.
This febrile enthusiasm for closer ties to Russia begs all sorts of questions, the most pressing of which is, Why? What are we missing? Given Peters past murky behaviour over money our suspicions cannot be anything but quickened by his strange crusade. Unfortunately for Peters his public encomiums of Russia have been unfortunately timed. Within a day or so, we awoke to find the UK has essentially cut diplomatic ties with Russia, expelling a phalanx of spies from the country. This was followed by condemnations from the NATO powers: the US, Germany and France. It seems Russia has been acting more like a rogue state. It has committed murder and attempted murder of former Russian residents and a policeman, upon UK soil. There are murmurings that this is just the tip of a bloody iceberg.
How will Peters respond? Who can predict the mind of this rather strange man?
We expect that he will either ignore the incident, passing it off as a great cyclone in a mere teacup, or he will go uncharacteristically silent. Nevertheless the timing of his embarrassment leads to the impression that he is well into his dotage, out of touch with the real world, and passed his use-by-date. Just what we need for a Foreign Minister one would have thought.
At the other end of the age spectrum is our equally hapless Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. At the same time as Peters's unrequited love-affair with Russia became a national embarrassment, Jacinda has had to face her own incompetence. She was very quick (being the slick modern feminist that she aspires to be) to jump upon the "Me Too" campaign, adding her own hectoring to the global brouhaha. And all this at precisely the same time particular failures of her Labour Party became public (after being kept under the carpet in the broom cupboard). It turns out that the Labour Party had conducted "Youth Camps" at which some attendees had preyed sexually upon young teenagers. Alcohol, in apparent breach of the law, was copiously available, no doubt paid for by Ardern's Labour Party.
Ardern claims ignorance of all these goings on, which leaves her in an awkward vice: either she is attempting to mislead the public about her ignorance, or she is leading a party in which senior officials have been covering up the very kinds of behaviour the Leader has been publicly excoriating.
"Possum-in-headlights" Jacinda and "hapless-Winnie"--don't they make you proud to be New Zealanders?
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