A welcome strategic alliance – Mana and the Internet Party

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9936801I’M VERY PLEASED with today’s announcement of an electoral arrangement between the Mana Movement and the Internet Party.

It’s an arrangement which will bring significant benefits to the Mana Movement and to the country.

The benefits to Mana are that the arrangement means we are more likely to increase our parliamentary representation without any compromise whatever on Mana policies or principles.

Because of confused reporting some people think this arrangement is a merger of Mana and the Internet Party. It isn’t. Instead it’s a strategic alliance (or strategic warfare as a friend puts it) where each party remains separate and independent but we co-operate together to form a group called Internet-Mana which will put forward a joint party list in the election campaign.

The Mana Movement remains independent with our own structure, our own leadership and our own policies.

Mana is still Mana.

Every Mana candidate will stand on the full set of Mana policies. We will argue them on the campaign trail and every Mana member elected will campaign inside and outside parliament for them.

Mana will continue to campaign for those stripped of dignity and self-respect by 30 years of vicious government policies which have made the rich a hell of a lot richer at the expense of the rest of us.

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We will continue to fight alongside communities in places like Glen Innes, Maraenui and Pomare which have seen the scaly hands of John Key and the National government steal their homes and trash their communities on behalf of corporate greed.

In other words Mana is still Mana and the leader of the Internet-Mana is Mana leader Hone Harawira! (that’s four Manas in one sentence – you can’t have too much Mana!)

As I said in an earlier blog the main benefit for New Zealand is that it means every vote to get rid of the John Key government will be counted. If the Internet Party were to get say 4.5% of the party vote on its own for example then those votes, potentially up to 130,000 anti-National votes, would be wasted. Not so now.

There will be those who say Mana has only gone into this arrangement for the potential campaign money which the Internet Party can provide. However Mana’s priorities for 2014 have always been the Māori electorate seats and we already have the maximum funds we can spend on those campaigns. (In the three months leading up the election only $25,000 is able to be spent on an electorate campaign)

Where the additional resources will help is in the Internet-Mana party vote campaign. Mana on its own would have struggled to run a strong party vote campaign but now a joint campaign committee will oversee and fund this campaign.

In that earlier blog I also wrote what I thought were the three big questions for Mana as we debated this arrangement with the Internet Party:

    1. Would an alliance enhance or damage Mana as a kaupapa Maori movement?

    2. Would an alliance enable us to gain greater parliamentary representation without compromising our policies or principles?

    3. How would we retain our integrity, and be seen to retain our integrity, in such an alliance?

On the first question the answer is a definite YES. Hone Harawira is the leader of the new Internet-Mana arrangement – enough said for now.

On the second question I hope this blog gives a clear YES.

The answer to the third question is also a definite YES which will become clearer when the Internet Party announces its leader later this week.

35 COMMENTS

  1. 4. Will co-operation rid us of this corrupt, cronyist government? YES.

    The poor cannot keep surviving another term of Key and his moneyed mates.

    Therefore, it has my support.

    • I agree. If nothing else, then in the run-up to the election the presence of Mana-Internet will serve to help expose the chinks in the armour of our dear leader – chinks that are generally carefully covered up, but which I believe to be there, nevertheless.

      “You can fool some of the people some of the time . . . (etc, etc)”.

      • I think when 70 armed paramilitary police kick in your front door and terrorise your family and beat you while seizing your assets based on spying that was taken illegally all at the behest of America, that tends to radicalise a person and it has radicalised Kim.

  2. Well congratulations to all of you – I want to see as many Mana/IP people in parliament as you can manage. I think KDC might like to make some serious contributions in areas like net neutrality and universality too.

  3. The critics do not like Mana because it is the closest of any NZ parliamentary party to being anti capitalist and includes marxist and Māori nationalist elements.

    And now they bleat about Mana consorting with neo liberals! Neo libs do not usually go gunning for the state security apparatus as The Internet Party is clearly doing.

    Anyone that wants to deny ShonKey’s rotten bunch a third term should support Internet Mana’s party vote strategic alliance as part of the MMP numbers mix and the “get out the vote” campaign.

    • Anyone who dislikes Mana because it’s anti-capitalist would welcome an accommodation with neoliberals. Some people who had high hopes in Mana because it was perhaps headed in an anti-capitalist direction would be dubious about the Internet Party, which proclaims itself as neither left nor right. Kumar says it collects data, then makes the best decisions irrespective of which side of politics they belong to. The fact is that this is a recipe for right wing rubbish, since we live in a capitalist system and by the logic of capitalism. In a capitalist society, any government decision serves certain class interests, which are also mixed up with issues of gender and sovereignty. To pretend this is not the case is at best 3rd way Blairite rubbish and leads to further disaster.
      On a final note, libertarians are well known for wanting to cut back on state powers, in favour of the individual sovereignty of the Randian hero. There are neoliberals who tend more towards the libertarian side of things, so fighting the spy agencies is not necessarily a progressive activity. For example, there would be nothing progressive in wanting to replace them with private intelligence companies, which would be even more unaccountable. At the most fundamental level, Dotcom began to object to the spy agencies when they interfered with his right to make a profit. How progressive is that?
      Sorry John, but I think this will end in tears.

      • OVICULA –

        Quote: “To pretend this is not the case is at best 3rd way Blairite rubbish and leads to further disaster.”

        You are one of the few here, who see the risks and dangers. But even if that is not a case, even if it is a smart move by the Mana leadership, who convinced enough members, the mere fact, that they signed up with a construct by a wealthy new migrant donor, that in itself will open up a gaping gap for criticism and ridicule.

        And the IP does not seem to be all that “democratic” within, which does also “not look good”.

  4. I thought Mana was different to other parties. Guess they are the same and the ends justifies the means……….

  5. If seats in parliament were as political potent as you guys believe them to be, this deal might have something.
    If getting rid of Key meant more than replacement by his yuppie twin, you might have a point.
    When this is all blown over there will still be a revolution required.

  6. John Minto clears up a few things and his statements should silence most public criticism of the alliance. The statements won’t silence most criticism of course, because broadcast news and too many hate merchants will continue to provide information to the public that is the antithesis of factual unbiased knowledge.

    Mana and the Internet Party are two groups functioning in an openly democratic manner who have so far shown absolutely no conflict in their stated goals for New Zealand. They have plainly stated their belief in democracy, economic freedom and political accountability. They have trust in New Zealanders to understand what New Zealanders think is the direction New Zealanders want to head. The alliance puts people before everything else. This obvious willingness to head towards what they know can be achieved, is the very reason so much fear of them is being generated in the MSM. Nothing scares a modern Government more than the possibility of democracy in action.

    To the naysayers…is this new alliance not allowed one election before it is exiled for not being a strong and practical political force in our Parliament? To put it more simply, apart from an initial apprasisal of aesthetics, I judge new shoes after walking in them awhile, not when they are still in the box.

    • Well Freedom walk awhile there if you like.
      I hate to think how many million pairs of shoes we’ve worn out up the beehive steps on fruitless lobbys of patronising left talking mps.

  7. So is Laila Harre going to stand in the Kelston electorate?

    IPredict has at “Other” at around 8% which is highly unusual.

  8. Best case scenario for these weirdos is that they’ll take votes from the Greens.

  9. Mr Minto,

    I had a huge amount of respect for you. I voted for you at the last mayoral election and Mana was going to get my vote this time as well.

    However, for Mana to align themselves with a bourgeois, fat-cat capitalist like Dotcom – who lives in NZ’s most expensive mansion, who earned his money through the sloshing of electronic bits hither and thither, and not through the sweat of his brow – is pure, absolute, and total class treason.

    Would you have aligned with John Key? The difference is that at least Mr Key has never been convicted of multiple crimes, unlike your erstwhile ally Dotcom. And these aren’t political crimes of defiance, but crimes of fraud. How many of the poor are harmed every year by fraudsters?

    I don’t care what arguments you use. You have sold out. It is not worth getting power if you have to sell out to do it. Gain the world and lose your own soul.

    Dotcom is a CAPITALIST. Not a minor kulak, but a member of the godamn aristocracy in a capitalist sense.

    /disgusted

    • Anonymous User “Class Awareness” – interesting that you deride Dotcom for his convictions. You’ll find that most left-wing activists and revolutionaries also have/had convictions.

      Personally, it’s not the past I look at – none of us are saints (me especially). I prefer to see where we’re headed.

      • I wrote “these aren’t political crimes of defiance”.
        Pretty simply. If KDC was convicted, like a certain politician, at protests against anti-poor policies, then good on him.

        He was convicted of stealing. Not sure about you, but I think stealing is about as anti-socialist as it gets because it destroys the bonds of trust a truly communal society needs.

        And I just noted the hilarious irony of your article – and I quote “which have made the rich a hell of a lot richer at the expense of the rest of us.”

        Who is richer than KDC, exactly?

  10. Quote from above:
    “Instead it’s a strategic alliance (or strategic warfare as a friend puts it) where each party remains separate and independent but we co-operate together to form a group called Internet-Mana which will put forward a joint party list in the election campaign. The Mana Movement remains independent with our own structure, our own leadership and our own policies. Mana is still Mana. Every Mana candidate will stand on the full set of Mana policies.”

    In essence then, as recent developments now seem to make clear, it is a “smart” strategic move to get additional financial and technical support on board, to use for advancing the Mana and left, progressive movement, trying to reach potential (young) voters that have so far not responded to efforts made, or have not at all been reached so far.

    I may give Hone, John and others respect for pulling this off, but you will leave yourselves open to criticism, that you have accepted support from a very wealthy donor, whose only intention is to stir up the political scene, in order to unseat John Key and his government.

    As already happened in Parliament yesterday, the right will exploit this and accuse you all of something, what many on the left of centre have been accusing Key and his government of. A wealthy migrant donor supporting a political party or movement will sadly become a major issue in debates.

    Another concern is, that the Internet Party, which is now part of Internet Mana, has hardly got off the ground, has to my knowledge not held any conference or meeting with new members, and has not asked the new members to cast a vote, on who they want as leader or candidates.

    It appears, that Laila Harre, or whoever will be the leading IP candidate, will simply have been hand selected and appointed, which is hardly a ground level democratic process within a party.

    The latter are things that concern me, and I would welcome some comments on this from those that support all this “alliance”.

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