MUNICIPAL POLITICS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 175, 18 April 1908, Page 4

MUNICIPAL POLITICS.

; Whatever may be the issue of tlie present Mayoral electionj and however deplorable may be some of the tactics employed 'by , Mr. Hislop' and '. his i friends, one solid benefit is likely to accrue to the city from the contest. The citizens will, for once have been awakened from their habitual lethargy, and thousands of people .who . hayhitherto regarded municipal •struggles' as undeserving of the excitement and keenness which everybody brings to the Parliamentary elections wiJ be realising tHat civic politics r°<*lly involve some bis 1 issues after'all. The number of applicants for enrolment hag been unprecedented, an'' though the actual figures, whe* they are made public, cannot b» ; taken _ as arc exact measure of public. interest, yet, after every allowance has been made for- the possible proportion of unqualified Voters ? and for the people who ; been stirred up into getting envjlled without being, stirred up .into feeling any real interest in the election, the residue will still bp so large as to warrant a good deal of confident assertion about a municipal awakening. That the poll will be unusually heavy is quite certain. • -

There is really no great reason for surprise in the persistent lightness of municipal polls as compared with the really heavy polls in the Parliamentary elections. The standard of public interest in municipal affairs was set by the old conditions when the city was smaller and the issues personal rather than municipal. The questions involved were generally comparatively small, and they were, in a greater 1 measure than to-day, rather dull, and calculated to do anything but "stir the heart like a trumpet," A Parliamentary election, on the other h&ndi i» a thing ot laag pedigree. It was bora

in popular excitement, and lias been a subject for heat and enthusiasm | through the whole course of British Parliamentary government. Half the voters at a general election have cooled in a week or two, and take no interest in Parliament until the nest election. We may put it this way: that it is a convention to pay little heed to municipal politics, and to grow excited over a Parliamentary contest. To the Wellington citizen the transactions of the City Council should be of a nearer and larger concern even than the transactions of Parliament-itself. It should matter to him as much who is the Mayor as who the Prime Minister may be. A live interest in municipal affairs is therefore most necessary. No doubt a great many people who have enrolled .themselves as voters will lose their interest in . municipal politics, when the election is over, but the net result will be a gain, and many more people will watch the proceedings of the" Council in future than ever before.