Good on Litea Ah Hoi

The Dom Post reports:

Porirua Deputy Mayor Litea Ah Hoi claims her council is trying to gag her – and has offered to quit after being told to “tone down” her language by Mayor Jenny Brash.

Ms Ah Hoi offered to resign as deputy mayor during a two-hour meeting this week after Mrs Brash reprimanded her for comments in a Dominion Post article about the death of three-year-old Cherishsiliala Tahuri-Wright.

Ms Ah Hoi, speaking on behalf of the allegedly murdered toddler’s father, criticised a delay in getting her to hospital and said: “It really pisses me off to think they dicked around for a couple of hours while a little girl was dying.”

Mrs Brash said she had asked Ms Ah Hoi to tone down her “colourful” language – and not to speak as the deputy mayor when commenting in a personal capacity.

Well I think showing some colour and emotion in your comments is fine – especially when talking about failures that led to a three year old dying.

Mrs Brash raised the issue after receiving three letters of complaint about Ms Ah Hoi’s comments and an email from the council’s senior communications manager, Barbara Bercic, asking her to ask Ms Ah Hoi to tone down her language.

This is the part that atsonishes me. If I was the Mayor and received an e-mail from a staffer asking me to act as language censor for the Deputy Mayor, I’d politely tell the staffer that it is not the job of staff to tell Councillors what sort of language they can use. Councillors are elected by the public, and if the public don’t like their lanuguage they can not re-elect them.