Monday, April 04, 2005

Tamihere crashes and burns

I simply don't know what to make of John Tamihere's actions over the past week.

Firstly he went on the offensive in the House about the Waipareira Trust affair by complaining that TV3 did a hatchet job on him. One would have thought the wisest course of action would be to admit an error of judgement about accepting a golden handshake and move on but for some reason, that's beyond him. His attack wasn't spontaneous act as John had managed to convince a gullible Clayton Cosgrove into seriously suggesting that the Trust members would spend over $400,000 trying to fit John up.

Secondly John Tamihere managed to achieve the dubious distinction of having the first blog in the country to be shut down on Helen Clark's orders. This was due to his posting a rant that covered the same material as his original speech with some spicy defamation mixed in.

Now John has managed to excel himself by giving Investigate magazine a candid (and I do mean candid) interview about what's wrong with the labour party and his colleagues, the highlights of which can be found here.

What is going on through his mind? Mere drunkeness as Helen Clark has alleged is insufficient as the events are taking place over several days in which one would have expected John to sober up at least once. He's well and truly burned any chance he has of getting back into Cabinet after the election. Not only that, he's also blown any opportunity of leading the Labour Party after Helen goes. Why has he chosen this self-destructive path?