The bewildering self sabotage and self mutilation of te Pati Maori is a gasp inducing, heads held in hands, cavalcade of own goals that is as shocking as it is impossible to stop watching.
It’s not just a train wreck, it’s a train carrying toxic chemicals colliding with a full school bus that explodes into a pet shop for disabled kittens.
There are of course Political Winners and Losers:
WINNERS:
David Seymour, Don Brash, Taxpayers’ Union, Sean Plunkett, Mike Hosking, Rednecks, Chris Luxon, Winston Peters, Federated Farmers, Atlas Network, NZ Initiative, ZB and NZME: They are laughing and singing and praising this implosion just as te Pati Māori looked like an actual threat to their agenda.
Labour: Set to take back the Māori electorates as Māori voters turn in fury at having their hearts broken. Again.
LOSERS:
Doc + Mariameno: Put their ego before the waka with their desire for a leadership challenge.
Eru: Was attacking the leadership despite leaving out his own very self interested role in all the machinations behind the scenes.
Debbie + Rawiri: They deserved loyalty, not plotting.
John Tamihere: Despite being the architect of the Māori Party success, he’s been portrayed as an anti-tikanga Machiavellian dark prince who runs the party like a dictatorship when only about 2/3rds of that is true. The CIA once said of Saddam Hussein, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. If there is to be any real material change out of post election negotiations, you will need JT to be part of that negotiating team. Capitalism won’t just let you change it, you have to force it to change, and that is JTs superpower. Having him blamed misses who embarked upon this destabilisation.
Māori Party Voters: As we face the worst Government ever, the Māori Party is in a civil war. It is heart breaking.
The wider Left: Every Poll tells us Labour + Greens + MP = 51%, watching te Pati Māori hand so much political ammunition to the right and robbing us collectively of a means to fight this terrible Government is rage inducing.
PREDICTIONS:
After defeating all the corruption investigations into them.
After an amazing by-election win.
After one of the biggest protest marches in NZ History against the terrible Anti-Treaty legislation.
After all that te Pati Māori are now imploding because some wanted to weaponise tikanga and use that to justify their own personal ambitions.
It is heart breaking because a Labour + Green + MP Government could be the most transformational since the Savage Government.
There will be a last ditch attempt to heal things at the AGM in December, but if a truce is declared and healed it means everyone shuts up on Social Media and works together without one single example that the Right can use.
If the egos can’t be unwound, it will end in 2 by-elections that no one will want to fight.
If there are 2 by-elections, you will see te Pati Māori put up candidates against Doc and Mariameno and the Labour candidate will come through the middle.
The question now is, how self mutilating is te Pati Māori?
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Tamehire is to blame for this whole mess. When he knew his MPs were divided he should have sat down with them and thrashed it out privately.
Instead, he put his family first and led a public attack against the unhappy faction.