“Indecisive political wanna-be Stephen Mayne has reversed his decision to quit as a People Power candidate and will stand at the November 25 poll.”

So said Rick Wallace in The Australian today. There was also a tough five minute interview with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne before 9am this morning.

So how to explain all this flip-flopping? Despite resigning as the candidate for the upper house region of Southern Metropolitan on 18 October, I remained on the People Power board, continued with preference negotiations, put our more editions of Bracksed.com and spoke at party functions.

Truth be known, I did get a bollocking from the good burghers of People Power and was absolutely torn by the decision. With more than 60 candidates ready to run, a lot of good people were being let down.

Attending the Transurban and PBL AGMs also just put more fire in the belly. Shouldn’t the Liberal-Labor duopoly be punished for conspiring to give Melbourne the world’s second biggest tollroad and Transurban shareholders a 1000% return?

And why should Channel Nine get away with not covering our anti-pokies pitch just because PBL owns Crown Casino?

A couple of our people also had a good meeting with Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden who said the party wouldn’t be discriminated against because of my involvement.

With all this going on, discussions continued and we agreed on an internal restructure as assurances were given that we’d become a more cohesive unit if I returned.

After that, we secured an excellent number two as a running mate in Southern Metro – Judith Voce, the former mayor of Boroondara. Things were really looking up.

Finally, there was my wife’s success at the RACV. Paula got elected with the support of 1.8% of RACV members and it would only take a primary vote of about 6% to crack the Victorian Parliament given that preference negotiations are looking good.

Given all this, it was time to swallow the pride and get back into the race to give voters a minor party alternative to Family First and the Greens. There’s now even even a chance my mate Jack Reilly will come back too.

Hopefully this explanation has more credibility than Ross Perot’s excuse in 1992 when he pulled out of the Presidential race claiming Republican Party operatives had attempted to disrupt his daughter’s wedding, only to return three months later.