Unease growing over poll’s potential results
“DEMOCRACY is a revelation, but it’s complicated.”
Kosovo’s first female president, Atifete Jahjaga, knows this better than most.
She had never held a political office before the independent was installed as her fledgling self-declared country’s president.
At the start of the day Ms Jahjaga was a police officer. After some quick negotiations were struck, by that evening she was Kosovo’s supreme leader.
The political crisis that had threatened to grip the European state was over with little more than a backroom deal.
Geelong is a long way from the Balkans — both geographically and democratically — but there is some symmetry.
The council was dismissed, administrators parachuted in and all of the organisation’s problems were to be wiped out before the hastily negotiated October 2017 election.
However, that prospect still leaves a coterie quite nervous; yearning for “stability”, the group has long been keen to stave off a return to the messy multi-headed beast that is democracy.
The Geelong Advertiser reported last week that the 20person delegation hit up Spring St, trying to convince Labor and the Coalition alike to abandon the October 28 election.
To the delegation, which was led by the Committee for Geelong, the complications that could be thrown up by a potentially belligerent council are something to be avoided.
But the web of power in this city is nothing if not tangled.
At this juncture, the relationship between the council and the Committee for Geelong appears somewhat cosy.
After 11 years as chief of the committee, the appointment of Peter Dorling as one of three council administrators avoided the need for any introductions. Within four months, that alliance would be strengthened and formalised.
The council reversed a decision made by councillors and renewed its $25,000 membership of the lobby group.
As we fast forward 11 months, council candidate Michael King has called out the elephant in the room.
“Administrators are paying $25,000 a year of ratepayers’ money to a group that is putting intense pressure on the Government to extend the administrators’ tenure,” he said.
That’s the Michael King who has been a former deputy mayor of Geelong, and board member of both the Committee of Geelong and G21. In his quest to join the council again, he is publicly blowing up his old ties.
Several other candidates hold, or have recently quit, high-ranking roles with key corporate supporters of the Committee for Geelong.
If voters do get the chance to judge their independence and commitment to the ratepayers’ cause at the ballot box, the results will be fascinating.
In the meantime, there are information sessions for prospective councillors and civic leaders coming up next month. The council’s got a forum; it’s a week after the Committee for Geelong host their own.
If you want details, the contact for both events has the same internal council email and phone number.
The path to autonomy is no less complicated than democracy itself.