Greens dump Hay

As David Hay feared, yesterday the Greens’ executive took the rare step of dumping him from their candidates pool.  He hasn’t gone quietly though and has suggested the Greens’ leadership should step down.

“The Green Party’s co-leaders need to step down and step away,” Hay said. “We don’t want people like this in Parliament. We don’t want them in Government. We don’t want them in the party. I have completely lost faith in the ability of the party’s co-leaders to stick to the Green Party kaupapa and do what the Green Party does . . . to be fair, transparent, and honest, to do a better type of politics.”

I think the Green Party executive made a real mistake in dealing with Hay behind closed doors.  It would have been more helpful to the Greens’ cause and ‘kaupapa’ if the membership had been given the opportunity to reject Hay and his actions themselves rather than have it come from on high – that would have been the kind of direct democracy that the Greens have talked about for years.

The part of the story that is only starting to come out now is why the Greens’ executive dumped Hay from the candidates pool.  It  is related to his actions and behaviour as a candidate at the last election.  Essentially Hay was seen as unable to stick to agreed campaign strategies and behaved somewhat erratically – sounds pretty Greens-like to me!