FILLING A VACANCY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23369, 8 December 1937, Page 8

FILLING A VACANCY

While some little attempt was made to impart an air of unexpectedness to the matter of the resignation of one of its members at the meeting of the City Council on Monday night a noticeable circumstance was that the Labour majority was singularly well prepared to cope to its own satisfaction with the emergency. Although the letter from Councillor Jones notifying his resignation was dated November 30 the Town Clerk apparently received it only a few hours before the council met.' According to his own statement the Mayor then asked that officer to inform " one section of the council" —meaning, apparently, the nonLabour members—of the resignation. Obviously his Worship had no need to be concerned lest councillors of the " right colour " should be unaware of the resignation. For an unusual feature of this meeting of the council was that it was graced by the presence of three councillors who are members of Parliament on an evening upon which Parliament itself was sitting. The fact that these three councillors, though Parliament was calling, saw fit to give precedence to their municipal duties on this occasion is only explainable because they had a particular object in view, and it is a reasonable conclusion that this object was the appointment of a Labour councillor in place of Mr Jones. Otherwise, of course, it was a remarkable coincidence that they should all have been in their seats at the council table so conveniently for the business that was disclosed and transacted. The reason why Mr Jones considered it necessary to resign at this juncture, after sedulously neglecting for so long to relinquish a position the duties of which he made no attempt to discharge, can only be a matter of conjecture. Two years ago, when he became Postmaster-General. Mr Jones could have retired from the council with dignity. Not having done so he might as well have continued to flout the proprieties of the situation for the remainder of the municipal term. The electors are not likely to think the better of him for having discovered at this belated stage that there was an anomaly in his holding the offices of city councillor and deputy-Mayor while making no pretence of being able to discharge the duties of these positions or to attend the council's meetings. The whole experience of the affront to themselves which the electors have been entitled to discern in his attitude, coupled with the infrequent appearance at council meetings during the Parliamentary session of other members of the council who occupy seats in the House, should be a sufficient warning to them against the election as their municipal representatives of candidates who have political obligations or political aspirations and are prepared to place party politics before municipal interests. This muni-

cipality's first experience of the City Council as a cog in the wheel of a political party machine should have taught it a lesson. The appointment of Mr R. Harrison to fill the vacancy on the council went according to prearrangement. The council could have dealt otherwise with the situation. But tactics make their appeal to the Labour majority. Mr Harrison was not the unsuccessful candidate who polled the largest number of votes at the last municipal elections. But his recommendations as a recruit to the council in the eyes of the Labour majority will be sufficiently well understood.