Last week an energetic Patearoa lady organised a candidates’ meeting in the rugby club rooms in Ranfurly and of the 17 candidates whose futures lie in the hands of Maniototo’s voters 12 turned up.
The audience numbered about a hundred which is almost as many as the crowd who attend the after-match functions during the rugby season, so a great turnout all round.
There was no referee to thank or abuse but the meeting chairman did such I good job I wanted to vote for him. But he’s a wily old dog and would never get embroiled in the dark world of local body politics.
We have to choose a mayor for the Central Otago District Council (three candidates), four members for the Maniototo Community Board (seven candidates) and four councillors for the Dunstan Constituency of the Otago Regional Council (seven candidates) so there are big decisions to be made.
Decisions were made easier by having seen these characters in the flesh rather than simply as a head-and-shoulders mugshot in an election pamphlet.
They were all neatly dressed and well-groomed, much like most of the audience. They also seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as their listeners and no physical violence or unsavoury insults besmirched the gathering.
Disappointingly, there were no hecklers in the audience.
A well-phrased heckle is my favourite part of political meetings but is there a politeness about Maniototo people which precludes such riff-raff behaviour? Or maybe it was because the bar wasn’t open and inhibitions remained unreleased.
After the rugby, it’s not uncommon to see the odd "tired and emotional" spectator indulging in mild physical violence but the Electoral Act says something about no alcohol at election time so we were saved any embarrassing outbreaks of over-the-top political partisanship.
That the meeting was bang in the middle of Maori Language Week had me looking forward to swathes of te reo from candidates keen to display their political correctness. But they do things differently in the country and the English language seemed sufficiently useful to get the message across.
The candidates ranged from fifth-generation farming stock with ancestors who once dominated the county council and other community committees, through to relative newcomers, some from parts of the country we all feel sorry for.
They cocooned us with gratitude for the vastly improved lifestyle they now enjoyed and brought with them some of the public speaking skills they’d picked up in big city boardrooms or Remuera dinner parties. The country-bred hopefuls usually just told it like it was — the odd fumble, a pause or two, the odd humorous aside and most of all, a smack of sincerity as they shared stories of the tough times they suffer under this, or any, government.
The speakers had only a minute or so to deliver their message, so specifics were rare.
Rather we had promises to fix potholes, improve roading generally, give public transport a shot in the arm and relieve farmers of pointless and never-ending bureaucracy — all this while slashing the rates bill and promising a better life for our children and our children’s children.
Well, what else could they say? This is election mode, after all.
Question time offered a chance to get down to the nitty-gritty but, all in all, the voters of Maniototo seem to be a reasonably happy lot.
Concerning, though, was the widespread dissatisfaction with poor communication from our elected bodies and the consequent feeling that Maniototo is so far away it doesn’t register in Alexandra or Dunedin.
I hoped a candidate might have leapt on this and promised to see that the new multimillion-dollar Otago Regional Council offices in Dunedin would be sold and a much more modest headquarters would be built in Ranfurly which is, after all, more sort of central, if you know what I mean.
Overall, I came away knowing something of the candidates and admiring them for turning up. I feel like voting for them all, but democracy doesn’t work that way.
But let’s ignore the frustrations of election time and note that, like all country gatherings, the great "Meet the Candidates" evening ended with a top-rate supper and yarning which went on long after I’d left. Democracy may be a good thing after all, especially when you’ve shared a sausage roll with someone who may well be your councillor next time you meet.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
