April 30, 2008

‘Putting the flea in the ear’ of the politicians

To “put a flea in someone’s ear” is probably more an English phrase than something from the colonies, but given that Indiana has its primaries within the next week, it does seem an opportune moment to relate a story from New Zealand’s political history.

(It’s a two-part tale folks, so we’ll continue it next week!)

The phrase usually means to pass some information on to someone about something. Politicians may not always be the easiest people to get through to, but New Zealanders did find a unique, and quite unexpected, way during the 1984 election campaign.

And the particular episode produced an unlikely hero, albeit one that politicians since have been hoping we will all forget!

In trying to research this episode, I found that the name of our “hero” is nowhere to be found, and even friends back in New Zealand who are interested in politics can recall the incident but not the name of the central character, who came within a whisker of being the most important individual in the New Zealand parliament!

This was back in the time when New Zealand also had a two-party electoral system (although without all the “super-delegates” and other complications that the American scene has).

We had the National Party (conservative, and in many ways similar to the Republicans here) and the Labour Party (more in the mould of European socialist parties, I think, than America’s Democrats). There were other smaller parties, and various independent candidates, but these seldom were taken seriously come voting time.

New Zealand operated a straight “first-past-the-post” contest. The first party to win a simple majority of “electorates” (which I guess would equate here to a district) was the new government.

Perhaps the biggest difference between New Zealand’s electoral system and the United States though, is that parties are not allowed to officially campaign more than (about) four weeks prior to an election. It does have the advantage that there is none of this endless campaigning you get in the United States, however it also makes it very difficult for smaller parties, who don’t have the name recognition of the major parties, to establish themselves.

Frustration with the two main parties making promises only to begin to ignore them the day after the election was already starting to creep in. A third party had been able to claim two seats in Parliament in 1981, and although the closeness of that particular race had guaranteed them a role as “policeman of parliament,” they had rather meekly supported the larger of the two main parties, although it was clear that was not what the voters had wanted them to do.

The question had become “How do we get these guys to listen?”

One of the smaller, but ironically better organized, parties was known by the wonderful name of the McGillicuddy Serious Party (MSP). It owed its existence to university students up and down the country, who revelled in the publicity of an election and used the moment to play all sorts of pranks in the name of “democratic freedom.”

Their only definite promise was to return the country to the dark ages, which if nothing else, made them the one party that was being honest about what it would do if it got elected.

Where the MSP really made its mark on this occassion however was in one particular northern electorate, held by easily the most conservative member of the National Party - so conservative in fact, that he actually made the Dark Ages look like futuristic science fiction!

Two MSP “activists” in his electorate found an interesting loophole in the electoral act. They discovered that the act didn’t actually stipulate that you had to be human to stand for parliament.

As long as you could raise the required number of signatures from supporters, make a mark on the registration form next to the word “signature” and pay a small fee, you were entitled to stand for parliament.

Accordingly, with the support of their friends, they promptly registered their pet dog as a candidate.

I doubt electoral officials could have predicted the impact this would have, given that this electorate was supposedly a “safe” National Party stronghold.

But over the month of that particular campaign, the politics of the entire country would quite literally be turned on its head, as what began as a teenage prank quickly captured a nation’s imagination.

This sleepy little rural electorate that had never before seen anything more exciting than Farmer McGoo chasing his sheep down the main road was to become the political center of the country as the residents of rural New Zealand proved they can be as eccentric as anyone else.

The general distaste towards the antics of country’s politicians had found a voice!

by FRANK SHANLY

frank@news-banner.com

Email Frank Shanly

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