I would factiously suggest to you that there is an old Māori proverb, ‘It’s all Tikanga until the lawyers get called in”
I have been blessed to work around many Māori organisations in my time and I have witnessed first hand the power and beauty of Tikanga in creating bonds that generate solidarity and lift groups to do amazing work.
But I’ve also seen it weaponised and used to control processes.
None of what has been happening inside te Pati Māori made any sense until Party President John Tamihere revealed that the bad blood stems from an attempt to launch a leadership challenge in July of this year, ostensibly because Debbie and Rawiri weren’t, ‘Tikanga enough’.
To attempt a Leadership coup when this terrible Hard Right Government are doing some of the most damaging social policy and economic vandalism we have seen in modern times is putting ones ego before the waka.
John Tamihere has many sins, but his leadership and stewardship has placed te Pati Māori with more power and leverage than they have ever had.
Debbie and Rawiri have been exceptional leaders and deserved loyalty, not plotting.
On the coattails of their extraordinary by-election win alongside vindication in every corruption investigation, the Māori Party should have been celebrating.
Instead they have been engulfed in personal rivalries and ambitions using self-serving definitions of tikanga.
There will be some Māori who resent the way the media have covered this issue and the interest in this internal fight, but the attention is driven in part by the hopes of almost half the voting electorate who desperately want to end this terrible hard right Government.
Labour + Greens don’t = 51%.
Labour + Greens +TPM do and that means extra scrutiny.
Everyone hurting from this Government’s terrible policies has skin in this te Pati Māori schism.
The ‘reset’, by te Pati Māori leadership was one of the most important political moments of the year. It was saying to the NZ electorate that they were evolving from just an opposition party of activists to being seen as a stable and credible partner in any new Government to topple this current one.
The ruthless way the leadership has treated two MPs they argue have been disloyal is to show they can be trusted to be stable. If a leadership coup had been successful in toppling Debbie and Rawiri it would have seen Labour rule them out because if the Māori Party can’t show stability inside their own Party, how could voters trust them with the stability of the Government?
All Eru, Mariameno and Tākuta have managed to achieve is hand political ammunition to Don Brash, Sean Plunkett, David Seymour and Mike Hosking.
That is the true tragedy of what we are witnessing.
Any votes lost to TPM will not go to the right, so those votes are still there to get +50%…
On the other hand not everyone seems happy that JT, his daughter, and his son-in-law, enjoy such tight knit control of the Party.
Vague references to the constitution, as a basis for expulsion, that hardly even satisfy barely competent journalists will wither and die under the scrutiny of lawyers.
This has been the leadership since the party reorganised , no secret, so wtf are you talking about? If politicians had a problem with TPM leadership then why didn’t they stand as independents instead of staging a coup once voted in under TPM banner. What a fucked up thing to do at a time like this. Those two are complete idiots and a betrayal of all who voted for them and all of NZ who need TPM to be strong and credible, which they are.
I feel for the “real, genuine” TMP party and its leaders. Ego’s are so controlling as we have clearly seen from Luxon and Seymour. They can be so large as to completely dwarf a person! However the two renegade TMP MP’s have horribly read the room and are now in “no man’s land”. They should, at the very least, have had the brains to do their wrangling behind closed doors instead of using our twisted media who have had a field day with this! If life was fair, the renegades would fade away and disappear. This has again highlighted Luxon’s extreme egomania and weaknesses. It was comical to see he had the gall to claim “TMP is a joke”. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Luxon should have by now sacked at least 3 MP’s for their transgressions but simply changes the rules to suit. At least TMP had the b&lls and made a brave call. Luxon wouldn’t know what that feels like since he’s never ever done that – he is nothing but a milksop!
Yeah! Too right!! Expelling Mr. Hate and Mrs Greed was the right thing to do. Should they have waited until after the hui on the weekend? Who knows, just more dither and delay if the two renegade politicians were being intractable, obviously once the deed has been done, (surely challenging the leadership at a time like this in NZ politics is breaking TPM constitutionally) all the commentators need to get behind TPM now, quit the sniping from the sidelines.