The story of Greens politician Lee Rhiannon..!!

3) After failure of adopting Limited Tenure: Do not vote for Zionist...!!

After Lee and her faction failed to enforce the Greens to adopt Limited Tenure to oust Ian Cohen automatically, Lee resorted to new tactics. She was desperate, as she knew that without outsing Ian, he will win any pre-selection campaign.

Lee and her faction started to campaign to change the pre-selection process. She initiated new campaign to embarrass Ian to enforce him to retire.

The idea was to change the pre-election ballot papers to include new box: “I dis-endorse the candidate....”.

Her dumb idea was simple: If Ian cannot be ousted by Limited Tenure principle, then Lee would conduct vicious campaign against him to get large number of Greens members to dis-endorse him. Even if the campaign will not get the required percentage to enforce Ian’s disendorsment, he will feel embarrassed and ashamed from high percentage of people disendorsing him.

She was successful in introducing new process for pre-selection of leading candidates. The new box was listed on all ballot papers. The job of starting vicious campaign of Ian’s character assassination and demonisation started in full swing.

Lee and her team started the cheap campaign against colleague. The team responsible for manufacturing and spreading dirt about Ian was mainly managed by her partner Geoff Ash and her puppet the late MLC John Kaye. The couple was very active on managing networks of Greens members supporters of Lee to spread all kind of dirt on Ian.

Strong supporter of Lee, tried to convince me not to vote for Ian and tick the box of disendorsing him because he is “dead man walking”. She had brief relation with Ian, and started to spread horrible stories about him.

Other Lee’s supporters started to spread all kind of dirt on Ian, from “dead man walking”, “deeply exhausted”, “old man that cannot achieve anything anymore”, “conservative”, “regressive”, “had no commitments to social-justice issues” and other accusations.
Lee and her team did not spare any dirty trick in their bid to make Ian look evil.

I was personally approached by Lee’s team, as I was representing the hard-left faction inside the Greens. Lee would have trouble to convince members of her dirty attacks on Ian, if I continued my silence on these campaigns. At many stages, I refuted these claims.

Lee’s special aids, Geoff Ash and John Kaye, met with me on at least two occasions. Their message was direct. I should join the campaign, as I should have personal problem with Ian.

Geoff Ash and John Kaye put it straight to me “how would you support Zionist Ian”.

John Kaye and Geoff Ash were very clear that Ian was extreme Zionist and all what I am hearing from him about supporting Palestine state are lies. John Kaye, and in his bid to convince me to vote against Ian and participate in the campaign to demonise him, told me that Ian is attending Zionist synagogues after each speech at pro-Palestinian rally to apologise for the supporting words on the need to establish Palestinian state. He even showed me articles on Australian Jews News newspaper of Ian’s attending synagogues.

Lee and her team were very desperate to get rid of Ian. They knew that he is the last obstacle for them to totally control the NSW Greens party. By enforcing Ian’s early retirement, Lee’s faction would easily control the Greens parliamentary team and other executive committees.

While I did not vote for Ian, because I deeply believed in power-sharing, I refused to buy Lee and her factions’ lies. And I did not participate in the campaign to demonise him.

Lee’s campaign to get enough disendorsing votes failed miserably. And Ian won pre-selection easily.

To date, I did not believe how Ian remained calm on these back-stabbing from supposedly colleagues and comrades in the same party fighting for the same vision.

Not only this. Ian and his faction (based around Byron Bay and NSW North coast) were still cooperating with Lee and her faction. They did not return the fire when Lee ran for pre-selection in 2006 (for 2007 NSW election).

Of course Lee and her faction did not give up, after Ian’s securing pre-selection for 2003 election. The dirty campaign against Ian continued.