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.

Pacific Island leader called a "dumb ass coconut" by former Porirua deputy Mayor

TV3 has reported that Porirua's former Deputy Mayor has called Liz Tanielu a "dumb ass coconut" becuase she happens to be a pacific Island leader who supports Hekia Parata in the Mana By-election. Tanielu heads the Teaaomanino Trust,the biggest Pacific Island service provider in Mana. Ah Hoi has hated Hekai Parata for a long time, and now her vitrol is coming out in the wash as she spends her time campaigning for Kris Fa'afoi.

Tanielu said some positive things about Hekia Parata in the media lately. Ah Hoi didn't like it so she made the offending comments on the Porirua Proud Facebook page.

When the media inquired about the comments, Ah Hoi was forced to apologise. Sort of

I, Litea Ah Hoi, on behalf of Porirua Proud apologise for the term ‘dumb-ass coconut’ being used. And if people are offended by it, can I suggest you put it in a bubble and blow it away.

It's not the first( or second) time Ah Hoi has been in the media for her intemperate language. She's the Porirua City Council equivalent of Hone Harawira.

Anyone know why the website for Porirua Proud is temporarily suspended? Is it because AH Hoi doent want you to see this

Hey people...Is Henry a PI or is he a kumara? What a jerk!!! Go Kris Fa'afoi!!!

This was written by Ah Hoi about a youth mentor from Partners Porirua, a not-for-profit organisation set up to promote and facilitate closer working relationships between the business and education sectors - and supported by Ah Hoi's Council.

update There's the full interview of Litea Ah Hoi wihich makes referene to the Kumara quote also.

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

updated
A commenter on Kiwiblog left this message.

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.