OPINION

Yesterday Golriz Ghahraman appeared in court to plead guilty for her shoplifting offences. It must have been a humiliating experience but something interesting has come to light. Ghahraman was originally due to appear on 20 March, but somehow managed to squeeze in her appearance seven days earlier.

But that is not the curious part of the shenanigans going on with her case. It appears that the judge hearing the case yesterday, Judge Maria Pecotic, appears to have previously been a work colleague of Golriz Ghahraman.

The first piece of evidence comes from a Stuff article:

Stuff

And the second is from the NZ Herald;

NZ Herald

Prima facie, it appears that Judge Maria Pecotic and Golriz Ghahraman have worked together on at least two cases, for which there is publicly available information proving such a relationship.

Now would a former work colleague come down harder or softer on a thief? Surely there is a conflict of interest.

This whole episode had a stench about it from the get-go, especially with Ghahraman doing a runner overseas for a period of time before finally resigning from Parliament in disgrace.

Now it appears that the court schedule has been subverted so that Ghahraman can appear before a judge she has previously worked with.

It doesn’t just appear to be vaguely dodgy, it looks precisely dodgy. It stinks, and you can smell the wafting coincidence all over Auckland, permeating everywhere.

What on earth is going on? The judge should have recused herself. She certainly should recuse herself for sentencing now.

If this involved a former National MP then accusations of mates from the Northern Club and corruption would be hurled around with gay abandon by the left. Now we get to watch the Greens and Labour tie themselves in knots justifying this.

Some random impertinent questions need asking. Was her case brought forward because she knew the judge? Did the judge accommodate her? Will the same judge do the sentencing?

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...