Winston Peters clearly hopes that enough of us have short memories.
He was an integral part of the 2017 Government whose Covid policies saw our death rate from the disease amongst the lowest in the developed world. As shown by this graph.
He performed something of a triple summersault with degree of difficulty 3.0 by then turning up to the anti vaccination protests in Wellington and opposing the mandates.
And now he and his party have gone full circle and are actively cultivating anti vaxer candidates for Parliament as shown in this Stuff article written by Charlie Mitchell.
Like Kirsten Murfitt, who Mitchell identifies as Polly, who has some very unusual beliefs, like Donald Trump is secretly a zionist and 911 may not have actually happened.
And she is not the only one. From the article:
Stuff has identified several other announced NZ First candidates who have shared false or extreme views about the pandemic and other topics.
They include Auckland consultant Janina Massee, who formed her own political party last year called NZ STRONG but folded it last month to join New Zealand First. She has since been confirmed as the party’s Whangaparāoa candidate.
On social media last year, Massee shared a post that asked: “Why are we still being led to the slaughter like so many to the gas chambers[?]”, in a seeming reference Covid-19 vaccines. It is unclear if she wrote the post or simply shared it.
There is also Coromandel candidate Caleb Ansell who has posted QAnon catchphrases and who also called for the defrocking of the Archbishop of Canterbury for opposing a Ugandan Church’s extreme anti gay law stance.
And the Hamilton West candidate Kevin Stone who said that Covid was a “plandemic” orchestrated by multiple governments at the behest of a global financial cartel seeking a “great reduction in the population of the developed world and the virtual enslavement of the remainder”.
NZ First’s candidate vetting is not very good. Either that or it has calculated that there is a sufficiently large coalition with anti vaxers to get it over the line.
To add to the inevitable sense of drama Winston Peters and David Seymour have recently been throwing tosterone induced barbs at each other and Seymour has said that Act will not sit at the cabinet table with New Zealand First.
If ever there was a potential coalition of chaos it would be National – ACT – New Zealand First.
And the good old Winston side show, that has cursed New Zealand politics for decades, is going to get another airing.
Hold onto your hats. This is going to get very interesting.
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