With Only Minor Hitches
Winston Peters returned home in the past week with the apparent intention of defying the naysayers' -- that is, the media's -- subliminal claims that he had performed the tasks involved in his role of foreign minister inadequately when he was at the Commonwealth conference in Malta recently. Much like in the case of his visit to the Apec meetings in South Korea, political observers were looking to pull Winston up on small factors so as to lead him to fail at his new job before he had even really started it.
Winston's defences of his own integrity upon his return to New Zealand were reinforced by Helen Clark who allegedly commented that he had made a "pretty good effort" whilst at the overseas engagements, and that also he has made a concerted attempt to further New Zealand's interests, particularly in terms of the potential vulnerability of it and other small nations to terrorist attacks given that they have only small military forces. Winston at least recognises the potential benefits for New Zealand that come from its being a part of the British Commonwealth and at the conference he admirably made attempts to reap them.
However, it would appear that Winston's decidedly triumphant return home, dampened only by the extensive negative commentary provided by the various local media sources, caused him to drift into a notably cocky state of mind and lead to apparent throwaway comments that could well be further detrimental to Winston's image as projected in the media. On One News a couple of nights ago Winston was seen to say, disregarding the digs from the media and holding up the coalition deal as a success, "The facts are that the prime minister's happy with it, the government's happy with it, and I'm happy with it." The failure to acknowledge the New Zealand people's stance on his decision in this widely-publicised comment could well prove to be one that his detractors choose to pick at in order to further their argument that Winston joined in coalition with Labour only in the pursuit of the baubles of office.
Winston's defences of his own integrity upon his return to New Zealand were reinforced by Helen Clark who allegedly commented that he had made a "pretty good effort" whilst at the overseas engagements, and that also he has made a concerted attempt to further New Zealand's interests, particularly in terms of the potential vulnerability of it and other small nations to terrorist attacks given that they have only small military forces. Winston at least recognises the potential benefits for New Zealand that come from its being a part of the British Commonwealth and at the conference he admirably made attempts to reap them.However, it would appear that Winston's decidedly triumphant return home, dampened only by the extensive negative commentary provided by the various local media sources, caused him to drift into a notably cocky state of mind and lead to apparent throwaway comments that could well be further detrimental to Winston's image as projected in the media. On One News a couple of nights ago Winston was seen to say, disregarding the digs from the media and holding up the coalition deal as a success, "The facts are that the prime minister's happy with it, the government's happy with it, and I'm happy with it." The failure to acknowledge the New Zealand people's stance on his decision in this widely-publicised comment could well prove to be one that his detractors choose to pick at in order to further their argument that Winston joined in coalition with Labour only in the pursuit of the baubles of office.
posted by Gary at 9:59 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home