The government has given up even pretending that its suspension of democracy in Canterbury is because an elected ECan would make the "wrong" decisions:
But the Government says elections this year could potentially produce the same deadlock between rural and urban councillors that created the need for commissioners in the first place.
It says the commissioners' work on freshwater needs to be finished before elections are held.
Local Government Minister David Carter says he did not want the commissioners' unfinished work on water going to a council that may have the same rural-urban balance of power as its predecessor.
Which, when you get down to it, is the same justification used by Pinochet, Franco, Bainimarama, and every other two-bit despot: "those fools will ruin the country by voting for something I don't like, so therefore their decision must be overturned". Yes, National used a law rather than guns to do it - but that's just a question of means. The underlying anti-democratic ideology is exactly the same.
Before the dissolution, urban representatives responded to their voters, and moved to protect Canterbury's water. That meant that farmers didn't get everything their own way. That's democracy - and if one of our two major political parties doesn't like it, then I think we have a severe problem in our country.
