Hone’s second mandate

Make no mistake, Hone Harawira’s win in this weekend’s by-election was not about securing a mandate as the MP for Te Tai Tokerau – it was about securing a mandate as the parliamentary leader of the Mana Party. The Mana Party was registered by the Electoral Commission just over 24 hours before yesterdays polling closed at 7pm - and its leader was unemployed.

That mandate as a leader of a parliamentary political party was more important to Harawira than being just the MP for Te Tai Tokerau – although a by-election success had to happen for the former to occur. It was also more important than holding onto the deputy chairmanship of the Maori Affairs Select Committee. That’s is now lost as Harawira re-enters Parliament.

So for 21 sitting days this year, Harawira will be the leader of parliament’s newest political party, and he'll get funding as the parliamentary party leader. Formerly the holder of the Maori seat with the highest majority a 6000+ majority, he now has the slimmest majority in the Maori electorate – 867.

This win will make it more likely for people to party vote Mana at the general election. I think that Mana Party will be focusing on Harawira’s seat and the party vote in 2011 to build the Mana Party parliamentary representation around Harawira in Parliament. If Mana gets around 2 per cent of the vote in the general election, I suspect the party couldn’t care less whether two of the three MPs are list MPs or electorate MPs if Harawira gets his seat.

I suspect that the Maori Party will contest Te Tai Tokerau with a weak candidate, even Solomon Tipene. I also suspect that the Maori Party will lose at least two seats at the general election to Labour.

While the balance of the Maori seats will be distributed between the Mana and Maori parties, how that is done - and what these deals are - will determine the influence the holders of Maori seats have in parliament next year.

Who will win the by-election on Saturday?

The Te Tai Tokerau by-election will go down to the wire and this time next week we`ll know if that electorate will have a politician or an activist representing them in Parliament. At the moment it has nobody.

Marae Investigates interviewed three of the candidates over the weekend. You can watch that here.

The polls have Hone Harawira and Kelvin Davis neck and neck. That’s a real closing of the gap since 2008, when Harawira was more than 6000 votes ahead of Davis. Harawira has dismissed the poll saying that poor people can’t afford to have a landline phone – “young people in particular”.

Young people can’t vote, either. Many supporters of the Mana Party are either young people who can’t vote, are not enrolled at all, or are enrolled on the general electoral roll and therefore cannot vote on Saturday. But many Mana supporters have an internet connection. Many appear to be ineligible to vote at the election so are getting active on Facebook and putting out media releases instead.

Much has been made of some in the Ratana movement who support Harawira. I personally think it's irrelevant. The group is led by Kereama Pene, a leader of Mangere East’s Ratana church. He organised a hikoi to support Harawira, but only got about six supporters away from their Facebook pages. Pene had publicly said that Ratana should abandon support for Labour. I guess that call will come naturally to someone who was expelled from the Labour Party.

Ratana church leaders have responded, stating clearly that the church supports Labour.

So, I think there is every chance that Kelvin Davis can win, even though the Mana Party vote is elevated due to a poorly performing Maori Party candidate. Nearly 10 per cent of voters in the electorate voted National in 2008 – and they`ll vote Labour on Saturday.

Surprise! Cannon’s Creek gives Fa’afoi the Mana by-election

The Porirua East flunkies have done it again - voted a candidate in an election purely because that candidate is standing on the Labour banner. Results so far are here, 2008 results here.The Greens candidate, Jan Logie got nearly twice as many votes as Matt McCarten, and had the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis candidate got 26 more votes, he would have got more than Act’s Colin du Plessis' current tally.

In fact, the Cannon’s Creek vote was so strongly Labour that Hekia Parata would have easily been ahead on election night had those votes been disregarded. More than 12 times as many people voted for Fa’afoi than Parata in Cannon’s Creek – I wonder how many of them are beneficiaries and would have voted Hekia Parata if she was Labour.

I recon if I was the Labour candidate I would have been assured of a seat in Parliament, after awaiting the result of special votes. There are 1352 special votes to be counted.

The fact of the matter is that Kris Fa’afoi was not the best candidate in the campaign. Many of the 2008 Labour voters who actually thought about their voting choice decided to vote for a candidate other than Fa’afoi. Fa’afoi won with 46.4 per cent of the total vote while National’s Hekia Parata won with 41.6 per cent, after getting 35 percent in 2008. Or to put it another way, Labour’s 6000 majority in 2008 was slashed down to an election night majority of 1080. And we know what 1080 is.

If Fa’afoi wins the election after the specials, perhaps he could shift his electorate office to Cannons Creek. Because, overall, the rest of the electorate wanted Hekia Parata as their MP.

If the Creekers were to wake up and get with the rest of the marginal electorate in 2011, Hekia Parata will be the next MP for Mana. Mana is no longer the ninth safest seat in the country - its not a safe seat for Labour at all.And it's not often that a candidate associated with the Government makes one of the safest seats in the country marginal - by elections usually swing against the government.

More on Mana

It’s becoming clear to many Labour supporters that Kris Fa’afoi is not the best candidate on the left for Mana in the coming by-election. Jan Logie has a better connection to the electorate and Matt McCarten sounds a lot more principled.

I think Labour could have put up a better candidate, and if Fa’afoi does win the by-election, many in the Mana electorate will be asking why they are being represented by someone who is not from the electorate, who has criticised others such as Matt McCarten for not being from the electorate, when Hekia Parata is currently working in the electorate.

Liz Tanielu heads the Teaaomanino Trust. It is the biggest Pacific Island service provider in Mana, and Tanielu has voted Labour. But Tanielu supports Parata. Tanielu took part in a debate at a fundraising auction earlier this year, organised primarily by Parata's Mana office, and raised more than $30,000 for Mana youth. So Tanielu is no bystander, she is involved in the community and has seen what Parata can do as an MP. She has also seen what Laban did as an MP and doesn't appear to think that Fa'afoi measures up.

In a by election, you should be voting for the person you want to represent you. You should not be voting for an MP based on the party he or she belongs to, not whether that person represents the left or the right of politics. That’s what Liz Tanielu is advocating for. However it appears that those who vote Fa’afoi wil be voting him because he is Labour, those who vote for Parata will be voting for her because she is Hekia Parata. Those who vote for Matt McCarten will be voting him because he is Matt McCarten. Therefore this race should be between McCarten and Parata, it’s just a pity that Logie appears squeezed out by the bigger names. And it is also a shame that Fa’afoi is even standing, because he is the wrong candidate for Mana.

If Labour wins this by-election, Logie will still be living in Mana, McCarten will return to the place from whence he came, and many will consider Parata the de facto electorate MP even though she will still be a list MP.

Mana Samoan community supports Hekia Parata

It's not only the expected support of Hekia Parata from Porirua Deputy Mayor Liz Kelly that is making news, many of the Pacific community now support Parata to win the Mana by-election. I think Mayor Nick Legett would also be pretty happy if Parata won.

Labour's Kris Fa'afoi has been favoured to take the seat, not because he is Kris Fa'afoi, but becuase he is Labour. But the tide is shifting, particularly in the Pacifica community. Parata is not a hard right National member - she can draw support from both the left and the right - and she is doing that at the moment.

On the left, Trevor Mallard endorses Hekia Parata, perhaps not to win the by-election, but certainly as a front runner to be a Minister now that Pansy Wong has gone. Trevor Mallard thinks Parata may make a good education Minister. She can certainly defend National Standards better than Anne Tolley.

Many Mana voters realise that they want a person who is familiar with, and has worked in, Mana. Those who want this have only one choice. Other candidates live in the electorate, but dont work in the electorate. Fa'afoi and Matt McCarten do neither. If anyone deserves to win the Mana by-election it is Hekia Parata. It remains to be seen whether voters agree next weekend. If Fa'afoi wins Mana, some community movers and shakers won't be too happy.

More on Mana

The Alliance candidate Kelly Buchanan has effectively withrawn from the Mana by election. Although her name will be on the ballot paper because she couldn't withdraw in time, the Alliance is encouraging supporters to back McCarten. McCarten is also backed by the UNITE union.

The by-election will be held on November 20. Also, if high profile by-election candidates are going to send media releases criticising National Standards, you'd think at least they'd spell every word correctly and put commas in the correct places.

Labour Party members confirm Fa'afoi stitch up

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As a local party member I have seen some stitch ups in my time but this was a disgrace and once again the Mana Labour party is lumbered with an out of town drop in candidate.

We should be used to it by now I guess, but it really gets my goat. Almost the entire leaders office staff including the chief of staff and leaders secretary were there today, you had a group of staff including other press secretaries and advisors counting to floor votes and “checking” membership details. They even tried to stop one longtime member in her 70s from voting – she still has Michael Joseph Savage on her kitchen wall and these upstarts tried to say she wasnt Labour!

These Goff staffers brought with them affiliated union members to stack the votes in favour of Faafoi.

The whole thing was a set up and it was a race based selection. Well, Phil Goff has got the man he wanted but he has lost my support and the support of many others in the process.

This confirms what I wrote yesterday. Now I have spoken to someone who was at the meeting yesterday. Labour's Local Electorate Committee is controlled by Winnie Laban. She wanted Fa'afoi, so her committee voted for Fa'afoi, even though some may have not supported him. Goff's office wanted Fa'afoi, and his three votes got him. The other vote was decided by the community. That vote was made up of 52 locals and 60 unionists. The locals wanted Pagani. The unionists wanted Fa'afoi. NoneAlthough apparently some of the unionists were locals, there were more unionists than other community members, so they had sway, and they were roped in as union members to represent Goffice and vote Fa'afoi, not to reflect the electorate's Labour membership.

This meant that the community vote was stacked with unionists to make sure Fa'afoi got the nod, meaning that the Local Electorate Committee actually voted against the wishes of the local voters, and stacked the floor so that the community vote also went against the wishes of the community.

No honest person is denying privately that this was a stitch up.Every union vote went to Fa'afoi and about twice as many voting locals wanted Pagani than Fa'afoi.

Fa'afoi chosen for Labour in Mana because he has a brown face and favoured by Goff

Everyone is expecting Kris Fa'afoi to be the MP for Mana. If he is, he won't measure up to either National candidate Hekia Parata or former MP Winnie Laban. Fa'afoi is chairperson of the Pacific branch in Rongotai, and has just recently joined the Labour Party. In fact there are rumours that while he was a political reporter he applied to become press secretary for a National Party Minister. He is currently Goff's chief media advisor, and has said he would campaign on employment, health, education and local issues like the expressway.

Labour obviously wanted a brown face - preferably a Pacific brown face. Fa'afoi is Tokelean.The selection process was a stitch-up right from the start and many are sick of Labour parachuting in head office appointees to win selection in one of the safest Labour seats in the country. Mana community leaders are sick of having their MP imposed upon them. Many in the electorate would vote Labour, even if a cat was the Labour candidate.

Were the local Labour electorate committee to disagree with Goff's appointee they would have been told where to go. In any case they only get three out of the seven votes so even if they all disagreed they have no say if the other four take a contrary opinion. Porirua Deputy Mayor Litea Ah Hoi is on record saying that she feels she wants to see a Pacific Islander as Mana MP. What she really means is that she doesn't want to see a Maori who so happens to have an office in the electorate and wears blue representing Mana. Its obvious that Ah Hoi and Parata cant stand each other, but Ah Hoi tends to get more media exposure than Parata and Laban, meaning the public get more chances to see what she thinks.

Don't be surprised if Ah Hoi - who is running for Porirua Mayor - and Fa'afoi campaign in a tag team. Expect to hear a bit about affluent Whitby and state -housed Cannons Creek. And who knows, if Josie Pagani was not Palagi, she may have got the nod as she may have got Head Office and Winnie Laban backing - after all she is a local and Mana deserves a person as their MP who has a strong connection to the electorate - like Hekia Parata does. Kris Faafoi has less of a connection to the electorate than Josie Pagani does.

Wonder if Josie Pagani's husband John will be Labour's campaign manager, as he was at the Mt Albert by-election, the last time Goff flew in an appointee.