Name Your Price

The prospect of a government-establishing agreement being finalised this week had seemed tantalisingly close. Alas, it has emerged that there is a distinct absence of a cigar. The thanks for this could be particularly deservingly directed at Winston Peters who, in his typically underhanded manner, has insisted on swinging backwards and forwards, playing the two major parties off against each other in, as numerous reports would suggest, an attempt to achieve the best deal possible for himself.

Despite Winston having contested speculation by Herald journalists a few days ago that he was being offered ministerial posts by Helen as an incentive to flirt with Labour -- which could potentially result in the compromisation of New Zealand First's integrity -- for the sake of securing his support for a Labour-led coalition government, the idea has been floated again today. It is touched on in the article that Helen "is understood to have pressed Mr Peters for some time to accept a ministerial post." This of course raises the strong possibility that Winston was simply full of it in earlier days when he assured the New Zealand public, via the media, that this sort of bribery was not going on.

Reflecting even worse upon Winston is the fact that he is now reported to have taken up Labour's offer, in an essential cop-out from another significant promise that he made. He promised that he would not be bribed in such a manner. Indeed, before the election he switched stances several times as to what action he was going to take in terms of forming a coalition, in addition to alternatively suggesting that he may keep off both of the major parties' sides altogether. Topping it all off, Winston is meeting with the National Party today, a situation in which he is going to allow himself to be offered a "counter-proposal" to Labour's offer of a ministerial post despite the fact that he has agreed with Labour already. It is almost to be expected that there is a significant probability that he will use the offer that National provides in order to try and get Labour to cough up a more beneficial scenario with which they can provide him.

Somehow it was entirely forseeable that the 2005 election would come down to a situation such as this. Admittedly, Winston isn't exactly the kingmaker, as it is all but impossible for a National-led coalition to be constructed without the support of the Maori Party, whose constituency likely wouldn't have a bar of such an agreement; it would be electoral suicide on their part if they made themselves responsible for lifting National to victory. However, numerous experts and regular political observers have acknowledged for a fairly long time that it was a virtual inevitability that Winston would be playing the parties off against each other like this come this stage of the democratic process. It may be a decidedly static and, as a consequence, a not particularly lucrative situation for the New Zealand public; but the case is definitely not the same for the man himself. What is happening now is a bidding war to achieve the electoral support of Winston Peters, and he is loving it because he stands to gain a lot if he succeeds in playing things right.