The conundrum is especially acute because of the Greens’ pride in the place of principle.
The party that endeavours to hold high moral ground has been rocked again and again. Just yesterday Julie Anne Genter was found guilty of contempt of Parliament.
Any holier-than-thou image has been thoroughly splintered.
The scandals, and how they have been handled, have battered the Greens’ reputation. A party that cannot manage itself and its members appears unfit to manage the country.
The troubles undercut their attempts to paint the Greens as the primary home for left-of-centre politics, as a party of more than champions of the environment and social justice. The issues knock back hopes of supplanting the size of Labour’s support.
For now, the polls for the Greens are holding up near election-night levels. At first glance, this might not make sense.
However, Labour was mauled at the last election and is licking its wounds. It looks tired and stale and has soul-searching and reinvigoration ahead of it.
National, meanwhile, leading the coalition, is specialising in stumbling and bumbling. Health is a mess that cannot entirely be blamed on the previous lot.
A narrative about the governing parties being too closely linked to power and vested interests has gained ground.
If the Greens were going to make their hash of things, the year after an election is a much better time than when the next poll looms.
If there is any silver lining, it is that the Greens are humanised, that they — like everyone else — will have their foibles and failures. Sensible voters do not buy false and phoney facades.
They realise politicians and political groupings are frequently fallible.
A primary internal contradiction in the Greens is between idealism and pragmatism.
Because politics embodies compromise and because principles ostensibly are the core of the Greens’ thinking, the tension is heightened and often tested. Witness, for example, former co-leader James Shaw having to reapply for his position.
Real life and real situations are messy and embody such challenges. So it is with the Darleen Tana affair.
After the allegations of migrant exploitation (an issue dear to the Greens) via links to her husband’s business and a Greens-commissioned investigation, Ms Tana resigned from the party.
Ms Tana entered Parliament as a Green list MP but, so far, will not resign from Parliament.
This leaves the Greens one seat down on their proportional representation of 15. The reduced representation also cuts its office funding and allocation in question time.
Parliament’s waka-jumping law to allow a party to remove a rogue list MP was against the principles of the Greens.
It potentially gives excessive power to parties and party leadership.
It makes MPs beholden to the party and undercuts their ability to make stands on fundamental matters of conscience.
Ms Tana’s case is different, and the Greens began the exit process by formally writing to their former colleague.
Decisions on the next step — writing to the Speaker — will be in the hands of 200 branch delegates at a special meeting on September 1.
At least a 75% ‘‘consensus majority’’ (a contradiction in terms?) will be needed to proceed.
Clouding matters, and perhaps part of swinging momentum, has been the resignation from the Greens of the roopu Pasifika leaders (including Dunedin City councillor Marie Laufiso). Their several grievances include the way they say Ms Tana has been treated.
Gender, power and race — rightly or wrongly — have entered calculations.
These are issues of obvious sensitivity to the Greens.
A disadvantage of their processes is the long time they take, dragging out decision-making and bad publicity.
Ultimately, the Greens are forced into difficult balances between principles and pragmaticism and tricky predicaments.
The Tana quandary is one of these.
It could transpire the process stalls, Ms Tana remains in Parliament and Green MPs have little choice but to lump that fact.
