The NZ First Campaign

NZPA reports:

After being bumped out of Parliament in the last election NZ First has acknowledged it ran a “awful campaign”.

Last month it was confirmed Winston Peters would continue to lead NZ First in the near future, but was yet to commit to fighting the 2011 election.

“We ran an awful (election) campaign. There’s no two ways about it. We didn’t get our message out,”deputy leader Peter Brown told Radio New Zealand today.

“We got bogged down, and when I say we, Winston in particular, with defending all these issues that really amounted to not very much at the end of the day but it all became very tense.”

The problem with NZ First wasn’t their election campaign. Considering what had happened, it was quite good.

The problem was their conduct during the term of Parliament. The problem was vowing not to go into Government, and going into Government. The problem was having your hypocrisy exposed on funding issues. The problem was the Leader thought he was not accountable to anyone. The problem is the NZ First MPs defended the indefensible. The problem is not paying back the taxpayer their money.

If NZ First think they got booted out of Parliament because of a poor campaign, then they have not learnt.

Party president George Groombridge said the meeting would discuss restructuring the party and a possible co-leadership model.

Why does the co-leadership model of Zimbabwe come to mind 🙂

“We want to do it in such a way that electorates feel that they have more of a part in the running of the party and also we will be working right through to the top, to leadership.”

By more of a part of running the party, he means “a part”. Up until now it has obviously all been run out of the Leader’s Office.

Mr Groombridge said he hoped Mr Peters would be at the meeting.

So the Party President doesn’t even know if the Party Leader will be attending. How does that song go – EMM EYE CEE KAY E WHY, EMM OH YOU S E.