Smashing democracy

Unbelievable! The Government's justification for refusing to allow democratic local body elections in Canterbury is that the voters might chose a balance between rural and urban councillors!
It's eye-wateringly, head-shakingly wrong to behave this way, but they have. NoRightTurn posts on the  statements by David Carter to the Law Society and has a similar reaction to mine. Not disbelief, because it's not outside of what I believe the way this National Government behaves, but there's a whiff of disgust in his post, it seems to me.

"But the Government says elections this year could potentially produce the same deadlock between rural and urban councillors that created the need for commissioners in the first place.

It says the commissioners' work on freshwater needs to be finished before elections are held.

Local Government Minister David Carter says he did not want the commissioners' unfinished work on water going to a council that may have the same rural-urban balance of power as its predecessor.

Mr Carter is interested in the Law Society's suggestion of a council made up of appointed and elected members, but says that would not happen until at least 2016."

Nick Smith supports Dictatorship

Canterbury people lost their democratically elected Council to the National Government's ideological hunger for dictatorial power, when Nick Smith dismissed the Council and installed people of his own choosing. Canterbury people were justifiably incensed that a Government would over-rule the will of the people, but soothed their anger with the thought that they'd be able to elect a new Council when the rest of New Zealand held their local body elections. But no. That won't happen. National is to keep it's boot on the throat of the people of Canterbury and refuse to let them choose for themselves, according to Nick Smith, speaking at the Land and Water forum recently;

Canterbury doesn’t need another dysfunctional elected council making decisions on water, former Environment Minister Nick Smith says:

As a cabinet minister, he sacked elected Environment Canterbury councillors and replaced them with commissioners.

When their term expires next year, he hopes they will be replaced by a mixed council of elected and Government-appointed representatives.

In Ashburton on Thursday at a Federated Farmers water forum, he said there were some big water decisions ahead of Canterbury, including bulk storage and tapping into alpine rivers protected by Water Conservation Orders.

He said a fully-elected regional council making those decisions would result in the same “dog’s breakfast” left by the previous council, with views polarised into urban and rural camps."

Welcome to National's 'One ring to rule them all' style of politics, everyone.
There are unpleasant names for this sort of governance.