Word: keys
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...With up to 2.9 million New Zealanders about to vote in the Nov. 8 national election, Clark's Labour government is in strife. Having trailed the John Key-led National Party by as much as 18 points during the campaign, it looks ripe for the kind of electoral execution to which all long-term governments are vulnerable - the kind where voters decide they're sick of the sight of you. Days out from polling, Clark's best hope rests in the vagaries of the country's Mixed Member Proportional voting system, which make it unlikely that either major party will...
...Like all shrewd incumbents, Clark has tried to turn bad news to her advantage: "I have the experience, the judgment and the skill set which can carry our country through what is the worst international financial crisis for more than 70 years," she said in a televised debate with Key on Oct. 14. But many New Zealanders are buying National's line that the Clark government squandered the boom times by granting only a single round of tax cuts in nine years. Consequently, New Zealand's best and brightest are fleeing the country in droves...
...Because Key's background is in finance, he's taken on the air of a man for the times. Born in 1961, Key hadn't long started school when his father died from a heart attack. His immigrant mother raised him and his two sisters in a state house in Christchurch. Though money was tight, young John excelled at school and university, and in the 1990s made a fortune as a foreign-exchange trader. Recruited by National in 2001, he won the newly created Auckland seat of Helensville the following year. By the end of 2006, he was party leader...
...Key's borrowed from the playbook of many a successful challenger, aligning himself with the status quo where it suits, veering from it only on sure-fire perennials like getting tougher on criminals and providing more tax cuts. He's made himself, in other words, a small target, and Clark has struggled to lay a glove on him. In the Oct. 14 debate, a panel member explored the idea of Key as a Nowhere Man, the candidate having admitted in an interview that while he was a commerce student at the University of Canterbury, he'd had no strong feelings...
...Power and Passion If key lacks intensity, that probably wouldn't bother many New Zealanders. While they take their politics seriously here - voter turnout in general elections has averaged nearly 90% since 1960, up there with the highest rates in the world among countries where voting isn't compulsory - they're also politically phlegmatic, saving their strongest emotions for more important matters, like rugby...