Behind closed doors

have thought?) that the Maungatapu Track is being considered for development of a link in a regional cycleway.

Should this be the case let’s hope the mountainbiking hierarchy are as willing to share roads with motorcyclists as they are tracks with walkers! is not uncommon as we have found when walking, but we would never have thought that somebody would have so little respect for the final resting place of someone . Wendy Smith

Nelson, Sep 2 I for one wish to congratulate Nelson Mail editor Victoria Guild for her recognition that the people of Tasman must have their right to full and honest knowledge of all aspects of the proposed Waimea Dam.

After all any council decision will be at a cost to the districts ratepayers.

It is only natural to be suspicious when our elected representatives are called to closed door meetings which in the past the out come has proven to be against the interests of the majority of the district.

This instance is especially interesting as a decision might well go against previous decisions that were in favour of the majority.

R Nuttall

Upper Moutere, Sep 6

Brazil’s top electoral court has ruled ‘‘Lula’’ – former president Luiz Ina´ cio da Silva – cannot run in the presidential election in October.

He served two terms as president, from 2003-2011, he dutifully waited out the following two terms, and his Workers’ Party has nominated him for the presidency again. Opinion polls give him 39 per cent support, more than twice as much as any other candidate. However, Lula is in jail, serving a 12-year sentence for corruption, and he is not getting out any time soon.

The bad news is that he is probably guilty – perhaps not of the specific offence he has already been convicted for, but of four other charges of money laundering, influence peddling and obstruction of justice still pending.

Lula’s conviction rests on little more than the word of an executive of a giant construction company who claims he gave Lula a penthouse apartment in a seaside resort town in return for a lucrative contract with the stateowned oil company Petrobras. The executive was facing corruption charges himself, and made the accusation as part of a plea bargain.

There are no documents linking Lula or his late wife to the house, nor is there any evidence they ever spent time there. This case went to trial only because it suggested that Lula had sold out for personal advantage. He probably didn’t.

But there is plenty of evidence Lula engaged in other kinds of dodgy fundraising, not to benefit himself, but to buy the co-operation of other parties in Brazil’s Congress, where there was a plethora of small parties and his Workers’ Party never had a majority. This was illegal, but it was perfectly normal political practice when he became president in 2003.

So Lula appointed Workers’ Party members to senior executive roles in Petrobras and other stateowned