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LETTER: Beware those toeing the party line

Reader Bob Malcolmson questions CORE
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Re: “CORE candidates have no common platform, organizer says”

The five candidates running for CORE (Coalition of Responsible Electors) want us to think that they have “no common platform.” Each candidate, it is said, is his or her own man or woman. This is hard to believe.

The whole point of people formally associating with each other politically is to have a common agenda and to promote agreed-upon policies. That’s the point of a party, and CORE is clearly a party. Its website speaks of its “shared goals and vision” and states that its goal is “to elect a team” to council. A team, by definition, acts together.

To deny this is much like denying that the sun rises in the east. CORE’s rhetoric about diversity cannot be taken seriously. (More revealing is CORE-organizer Stephen Harris’s desire “to counter what he sees as a left-wing trend in Nelson politics.”)

If four CORE candidates are elected to council (perhaps even three, depending on who becomes mayor), they, as “a team,” which they say they are, will be able to control the city’s agenda. Other voices will be weakened or made powerless. A diversity of views can only be ensured if we elect people who act as individuals and are not committed to a party line.

Bob Malcolmson

Nelson