A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Now that the final election results are in, here’s a question for those moral mandators out there: with National on 44.4 percent and Labour/Greens on 43.2 percent, who has the moral authority to form a government?
Others on the right, in an attempt to delegitimise it before it has already
begun, describe a possible Labour/Greens/New Zealand First grouping as a “coalition of losers”. That term implies that National won the election. It did not. No party won the election, hence the need to court NZ First, the Greens having ruled out a coalition with National.
The only thing that matters is the numbers. Remember the first rule of politics — learn how to count. All talk of moral mandates and losers is just so much right-wing cant.
The parties deemed to have won the election are those parties which can command a majority of votes in the House on confidence and supply. Nothing more, nothing less.
We’ll find out who they are soon.
