The above created a stir here, in a country that I hope to call home. I have lived here near Christchurch, New Zealand for nearly a year. Having worked the local precinct voting site, issuing ballots to eligible New Zealand voters during the most recent general election referenced in these articles, I have a perspective entirely different from the first author. But his “opinion” seems to have a larger agenda of warning against globalization, nothing more. Try as he did, and so obviously from a rigid perspective, he severely missed the mark in his attempt to generate news. This is one WaPo op-ed where opinion will not become fact.
The next day WaPo did deign to accept a rebuttal (link above) which is more cheerfully written in a spirit akin to NZ as I know it. Frankly it should have been more scathing. Pieces with a hidden agenda as visible as the one in the first article deserve anything they get from a “tar and feathering” to a whipping of the old-fashioned sort.
By the way, Winston Peters, the subject of most of the article, is Maori.
