INDEPENDENT VERSUS PARTY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 304, 21 November 1935, Page 8

INDEPENDENT VERSUS PARTY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I have read with interest the different opinions expressed per medium of your correspondence columns on the “Independent” and “party” candidates. 'The point that sticks me completely is how true democracy can be represented by the “party” system at all. In my judgment it certainly cannot. A “pai-ty” represents a part or a section of the community and which ever “party” happens for the moment to be in power—Labour or otherwise—lt will certainly legislate for the benefit of that part which it represents. But is this democracy, is this representation by the people—meaning, of course, the whole of the people? In the final analysis it seems to me to amount almost to the disfranchisement of all that part not represented by the “party” that we comically term as being in power. These conclusions are, to my mind, sheer logic and well borne out during the past four years. The foregoing is surely no exaggeration of the position and speaks volumes for independent representation where full value of the franchise is to be gained, especially as a man of undoubted ability and integrity has placed his services at your disposal.—l am, etc., SPARKS.