THE BY-ELECTION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 24, 30 January 1946, Page 4

THE BY-ELECTION

DUTY OF EVERY CITIZEN TO EXERCISE A VOTE POLLING ON SATURDAY A by-election to find a city councillor to fill the vacancy on the Wanganui City Council, caused by the death of Mr. T. S. Russell, will he held on Saturday. There are hopes, irrespective of leanings, that the poll will be a record one for a by-election. Both candidates, Mr. M, G. Bignell (Citizens) and Mr. J. J. Scott (Labour) are well known, and they both hope that a keen interest will be taken in the election, indicating that the citizens of Wanganui are not inniiferent to the fate of their city, and to the tasks that await the energy and interests of its administrators.

“There are thousands of people in Wanganui who complain about the city, thousands who have their own ideas of how to run it, who are critical of all that is done in it, or for it, yet hardly a hundred of those thousands’ will even trouble to vote when an election comes round,” said a Wanganui resident of many years’ standing, discussing the coming election yesterday. “Those people do not deserve a city,” he added. “I don’t care how they vote when they get to the polls, but they should at least vote. These things go out to the rest of New Zealand, and It is a very poor show when all the Interest Wanganui can summon up for an election is among a few keen hundred or two out of thousands. It is the duty of everybody to vote. Anybody who doesn't vote is deprived of a right to criticise afterwards, deprived really of any right to civic amenities or privileges.”