LICENSING QUESTION.

Evening Star, Issue 19724, 26 November 1927, Page 12

LICENSING QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOK. Sir, —A “wowser” is a person who seeks to interfere with the legitimate enjoyments of other people. I give this definition at the outset because I intend to’use the word, and I wish to make plain its precise meaning. New Zealand would without doubt be the happiest country in the world at the present time were it not for the fact that our population includes a very noisy and mischievous minority of people of the wowser type, who make use of their power at the parliamentary elections to extract pledges from candidates at the price of the promise of their votes. This is bribery and corruption of the worst sort, and could only he engaged in by people whose fanaticism had outrun all sense of decency of principle. They intimidate candidates by their threats of an adverse block vote, and there is plenty of public evidence that this practice is rife at every election. jt is high time that some action were taken to put a slop to a practice which caTi only lie described as immoral and pernicious in the extreme.

Obviously the present law regarding bribery and corruption must be lacking in certain essential provisions or wc should long before this have been regaled with hundreds of cases in the courts. The Act should be amended so as to make it clear that pledges extracted in this way at the point of the bayonet constitute a corrupt act on the part of all parties concerned, and we should then be spared the disgusting examples of political chicanery which for many years past have disfigured the parliamentary proceedings of this crankridden country.—-I am, etc.. Anti-Wows Er.. November 21. ;