MAYOR OR M.P.?

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 36, 11 August 1921, Page 6

MAYOR OR M.P.?

It was natural that Mr. Wright, the party politician, should have been seriously perturbed by the idea of taking the chair at a meeting convened by a rival party, but as the invitation was addressed not to Mr. Wright, the party politician, but to Mr. Wright, the Mayor, it is to be regretted that these apprehensions were not overruled. It is really. the wrong Mr. Wright that has been allowed to decide the question. These cases of dual personality have their embarrassments. Sometimes they have their advantages, as in the case of the American State Governor who was reported ■ a fortnight ago to be pleading the divine right, of kings in answer to a charge of embezzlement, and to, be prepared to pardon himself if he was put in the dock like a vulgar criminal and the verdict went against him. Mr. Wright has not been called upon to take a hand in a Jekyll-and-Hyde problem of this extreme character. In the case of Governor Small, of Illinois, the line between Jekyll and Hyde was as clearly drawn as in SteveDson's story, but of Mr. Wright's two official personalities it cannot be said that the one is* as definitely bad as the other is definitely good, or even that the ,one ia definitely worse than the other. What is certain, however,

is that there is a perfectly definite dividing line between the two, that the province of each of them is definitely fixed by this line, and that the attempt of either of them to interfere in the province of the other must be repelled like that of any other trespasser. This fundamental distinction has unfortunately been ignored by Mr. Wright It was Mr. Wright, the Mayor of Wellington, who was invited to take the cftair at the first public meeting of the National Progressive and Moderate Labour Party in Wellington. As the object of the meeting is plainly not contrary to public morals, and it is to be open to all citizens, the invitation was plainly one that the Mayor would in ; ordinary circumstances have accepted, and this appears to be conceded by Mr. Wright. There was, however, one circumstance, and only one, which took the case out of the category of the ordinary, and that was the extra official personality to which we have referred. Besides being Mayor of Wellington, Mr. Wright is an active member of the Reform Party, and it was the fear that taking the chair for a rival party might compromise him in the latter capacity that induced him to decline the invitation. The action of the Mayor was thus 1 dictated by considerations wjiich should have been ruled out as entirely irrelevant. Mr. Wright, the party politician, had no higher claim to a voice in the matter than the whip of the Reform Party or any other outsider. The reluctance of a keen and conscientious politician to preside over a meeting convened by his political opponents is a natural and creditable feeling, but the solution is obvious. It must be sought at the expense not of the city but of the man himself. He must decline to accept a position in which he will be debarred from doing his full duty to the citizens by opinions and scruples which are entirely foreign to their municipal interests. If, however, he elects to give himself the,benefit of the doubt, and to become a candidate notwithstanding this disability, it is plainly his duty to make the position quite clear from the start, so that the citizens may know-exactly where he stands, and may treat this disability as an absolute bar if they so desire. . An ideal Mayor can never be obtained w this imperfect world, and there is no reason why the citizens should not regard an imperfection of this kind as more than counterbalanced by conspicuous merits. But if they care to elect a Mayor "with all faults," they are surely entitled to have such a fault as this disclosed before they make their choice. The root of the Mayor's error is not in having conscientiously arrived at a wrong decision, but in not revealing during his candidature that his politics -_ would compel him to take this line. His action emphasises the occasional antagonism -between Parliamentary and municipal politics, and will strengthen the feeling against putting a party politician into the Mayoral chair.