Democrats confident of 1990 showing

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 7

Democrats confident of 1990 showing

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

“Opposition in waiting” is how the leader of the Democrats, Mr Neil Morrison, describes his party three months after it lost both its seats in the General Election. Mr Morrison and the party president, Mr Stefan Lipa, were in Wellington yesterday reviewing the political shifts since the August election.

They attributed the loss of the East Coast Bays and Pakuranga seats, and poor showing in some others, to the failure of Labour supporters to cast a tactical vote against National as in previous elections. “Our party support moves in cycles and during the last five years we have been on a downward swing,” Mr Lipa said.

“But our structure and organisation are much sounder than they were during the last low point in the early ’7os so we are better placed to swing up again than we were then.

“We are well placed now to capitalise for the 19M election with the growing dissatisfaction

with Labour as the Government and with National as the Opposition,” Mr Lipa said. Mr Morrison said that since the election the new support for the Democratic Party seemed' to be coming mostly from people who despaired of National mounting any effective Opposition to Labour. National could not make up its mind whether it was to the Right of Labour where Miss Ruth Richardson stood, or to the Left where Sir Robert Muldoon stood, and Mr Jim Bolger seemed to be sitting uncomfortably in the middle trying to restrain both. It would be no surprise to see National actually divide into two parties — a rural-based, conservative, interventionist Country Party and a citybased, liberal, more-mar-ket Urban Party, he said. Even without that, the tensions in National could not be resolved without its leader coming down on one side or the other. Labour, on the other hand, would probably stick together because ft was actually in office,

but becoming more and more alienated from its active membership and its traditional voters, Mr Morrison said.

Mr Lipa said he hoped the electoral petition in the Walrarapa seat would reveal to everyone what the Democrats had long suspected — that Labour and National were in collusion on the question of ignoring the legal limit on election expenses. That would show people that Labour and National had formed a pact to ignore the law in the interests of freezing out any third party, he said.