Close, but so far no “baubles of office” for Winston Peters and NZ First. “We have done the impossible,” he told supporters on election night. But as the old saying goes, politics is the art of the possible.
For the past two weeks, as the polls showed NZ First climbing towards and then past the 5% threshold for securing seats in parliament, all the talk was about how Peters – the great survivor of New Zealand politics – might exercise the balance of power.
In the event, many things now hang in the balance. New Zealanders will have to wait until the variables and peculiarities of the MMP electoral system shake down once special votes are included in the final results.
