There comes a time in politics when it is no longer tenable for you to continue.
Golly G has reached that point. When the NZ Herald is the last to join the fray and they bust your chops with a headline like that above, then your political career is over.
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman worked as part of the legal defence team for Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadžić, who was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.
He got 40 years in prison and will die there.
Party co-leader James Shaw is standing by his MP, saying her work on international tribunals as both a defence and prosecution lawyer is all part of a robust justice system.
But her profile page on the Green Party website has now been changed to more accurately reflect the legal defence work she did at the Rwanda Tribunal and The Hague, and the prosecution work she did at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
In a series of tweets this week, former Labour staffer Phil Quin criticised Ghahraman’s work at the Rwanda Tribunal, saying she volunteered to defend “the worst killers known to man” and calling her a genocide-denier.
“Any MP who acted as a voluntary intern to defend war criminals, and authors papers that deny the Rwandan genocide, must resign,” said Quin, who lived and worked in Rwanda for several years.
In a comment piece on Newsroom, he added: “It’s one thing for a UN defence lawyer to be assigned to defend ratbags. It’s quite another to seek them out in a voluntary capacity.”
Ghahraman worked as an unpaid intern as part of a team that defended Joseph Nzirorera, who died before he could be convicted of genocide, and in a paid position as part of a team representing pop singer Simon Bikindi, who was convicted for incitement to genocide.
Quin published a photo of a smiling Ghahraman with Bikindi on Twitter today.
Shaw said Quin’s attacks were politically motivated.
“I think Phil knows as well as anybody that a functioning justice system requires both a rigorous prosecution and a rigorous defence in order to make sure that the trial actually delivers the result its intended to.”
James Shaw is in full corpse cuddling mode again. Phil Quin has no problems at all with how justice systems work. What he has a problem with is the deliberate obfuscation of Golly G. He also has a problem with the dishonesty…and the fact she seems to only care about defending Hutu scumbags, including two who were hiding here.
James Shaw is about to get another lesson in realpolitik and it is coming hard.
I think, and you may shudder at this, that Martyn Bradbury is right, the Greens are shit at politics.
If this had been Judith Collins there’d be many more column inches devoted to this. The fact the Media party is now reporting it can be attributed to persitent and accurate research done by bloggers and social media commentators. The mainstream media have been found wanting on this.
Now we are also aware of massive holes in her Iranian childhood, time is ticking on her spell in parliament.