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.