A commentary by one of our supporters on the savage attack on us — particularly on Geoffrey — last month by Cr Prvanov backed by the present Kapiti mayor, his deputy Holborow and KCDC Chief Executive Mr W. Maxwell. We’re not stating who the author is because of the likelihood of the person being put on the Council ‘hit list’ for reprisals — we know they happen from accounts of the saga of the Osbournes of Waikanae in 2017.

It marks one of the saddest days in New Zealand”s proud history of a free press when a local council so demonized a co-publisher of an online magazine that he had no choice but to resign as an elected member of a Community Board. The Council’s mayor and senior legal advisor sat in approval at the front of the crowd, like Madam Defarge in Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities as French revolutionaries were guillotined near the Bastille.

It is particularly disturbing as this publisher [us] was the only one in NZ willing to publish an article by NZ’s leading Civil Rights campaigner, Tim McBride. The NZ Herald refused to publish. Why? Because it pointed out serious civil liberty issues raised by the Government’s approach to Covid-19. It apparently would upset some in the “Team of 5 million”. Waikanae Watch’s commitment to press freedom meant it was the only responsible magazine publisher willing to give an expert a voice.

It is quite clear from the facts that for the same reason Waikanae Watch published a satire by a contributor in which certain male councillors were identified as political eunuchs every time voting for the Mayor’s ideas and the female councillors who had for 7 months given the Mayor 100% support were described as political concubines. The satire went out to suggest that they all liberate their minds and exercise their own minds.

The immediate Mayoral reaction was to express outrage at what he alleged was racism [possibly because of the reference to the ‘Taj Mahal of Kapiti’?] and sexism [both genders were actually satirized, but facts don’t matter to this Mayor and to Cr Prvanov]. A motion for the removal of the member was filed. When told that wouldn’t work, another motion required him to be publicly humiliated.

It gets worse.

As soon as the publishers were made aware that no women on the Kapiti Coast District Council understood what satire was, and that it had purportedly caused the deepest of all offensiveness to a female councillor, the article was quickly deleted, and an apology sent to the offended party. But this was not enough. By now the bevy had come together to demand this democrat be gone: the defender of freedom of expression was slaughtered by those opposed to democracy.