Politics does not corrupt — corruption corrupts

I don’t suppose it occurred to Barry Walsh (Nov 22) that the very least we should expect from an elected representative is the ability to say ‘no’ if offered inducements from developers wanting to influence planning decisions, and to make their efforts to do so public.

Like Trevor Sargent tried to do and let’s not forget, it wasn’t the public who attacked, it was other councillors. Why is it developers offered money to some people and not to others? In the 1970s and 1980s not every councillor was on the take. Even if we take all the rumours about certain people at face value, they still only make up a tiny percentage of those who have held office and they were from the two main parties and afforded the full weight of political machines.

So to claim, as Mr Walsh does, that it was a need to obtain finance to pay for campaigns that started the rot of cronyism, is a myth. Corrupt people brought in cronyism. Corrupt people who were elected time and time again by people who claimed not to want corrupt politics and who, to this day, when presented with the evidence of corruption, go out and re-elect that person with an even higher vote.