Two weeks and twelve thousand miles away from home and what
was so important before is much less important now. No more scraping frost off
the car, no more traffic queues to work in the morning, no more work!
But some things do not fade away with distance. Such as the
ongoing media nastiness about Bob Parker’s situation. Intense pressure these
past few days and weeks (maybe even years!) has got too much for him and he’s
exhausted. Who can blame him, new revelations every day about some fresh
communication breakdown inside the council? Combined with continued media
attacks, relentless, enough to wear anyone down. He’s borne it all with the
sort of statesmanlike leadership we saw after the earthquakes – calm authority,
telling us what he has been told is the truth. From what I’ve seen of Bob, he’s
straight up. He wouldn’t lie.
But The Press continues to be unrelenting. The day after his
announcement not to stand for election, there were two pages of “Mainlander” criticism
of Bob and the council they chose not to pull. And now, whenever they refer to
his decision, they imply he stood down because early indications The Press poll
results showed his popularity had declined. And there’s a whole lot more
nastiness that doesn’t bear repeating.
A lot of people asked me ‘Why don’t you stand for the
council? We need people like you.’
You’ve got to be kidding. Who would want to be a councillor –
let alone a mayor – when everybody, from the local rag to the local whingers,
see you as fair game for snide remarks and downright slander. I’ve always stuck
up for The Press, it was my training ground after all, but it seems to have
become a source of major negativity in our town. How long before the honeymoon’s
over and Lianne gets the same treatment? Six months? Less?
I had a very small experience of this negativity when I
carried out the council audit. I was fair game for the naysayers, The Press and
its many columnists included. But what I went through then was nothing compared
to what the Mayor has had to put up with lately.
True, he’s not perfect. True, his decision to trust his
management team may have come back to bite him. But for heaven’s sake, let the
whingeing stop!
There is a small glimmer of hope: you kick a man when he’s
down and people go to his rescue, stand up for him even. And the online
nastiness eventually self corrects. I hope that’s soon.
