Barry Soper: Chester Borrows' case belongs to rubbish bin

Whanganui MP Chester Borrows appeared in the Whanganui District Court. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

If you'd said to the elderly female, placard waving protesters in Wanganui last March that Donald Trump was going to be their saviour they'd have thrown up.

They were about the same demographic who came out in the final weeks of the nasty Presidential election campaign, accusing him of being an octopus, a man who couldn't keep his hands to himself and who, because of his fame, felt he could kiss and grab them and get little opposition.

These are the women behind the prosecution against one of the more mild mannered politicians in this country, the deputy Speaker Chester Borrows for allegedly driving his car at them causing injury. Borrows will hear from Judge Jim Large today over whether the prosecution will go ahead.

Borrows was driving through a crowd of ranting protesters opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership that passed through its final reading in Parliament's bear pit last week.

It's now not worth the statute paper it's written on, the American President elect's seen to that.

Trump took to his Presidential campaign podium several months before the election, tweeting it's a job killer. Earlier he said the agreement's "five thousand pages long and every country backing it has studied every word, every comma, every sentence, every paragraph; our guys probably haven't even read it. That's the way we do business."

So while the Wanganui protesters will be rejoicing Trump's ignorance, let's hope they reflect on what they're putting their MP through. Borrows was a cop in a former life and he went by the police driving school manual as he and his passenger, the formidible Paula Bennett, drove towards the protesters last March. It teaches cops to proceed slowly but not to stop, otherwise they'd more than likely be on the car.

Three women got in front of it as it inched towards them and one put on an Academy award winning performance, shrieking she was injured and was put on a gurney and taken away in an ambo. She later said she was traumatised, she'd suffered injury to the soft tissue in her leg, more likely the soft tissue injury was already there, between her ears.

Having viewed the video on numerous occasions, why the police bothered to prosecute is beyond me and it was certainly beyond Borrows' colleagues who've all chipped in to help with the legal expenses, such is the esteem this MP is held in.

Let's hope Judge Large sees the bigger picture today and relegates the case to where it belongs, the rubbish bin.