Can Hone Harawira save te Pati Māori?

When Hone was kicked out of the Māori Party in 2011, Matt McCarten and I were putting together the MANA Party for him and I served as Mana’s Political Strategist.

Hone is one of the great political leaders in NZ Politics and working with him for years inside MANA was one of the best roles I ever had.

I have an enormous amount of respect for him.

Of late, Hone has been arguing tirelessly that te Pati Māori, Greens and Labour have to work together to defeat this hard right Government.

Hone knows where the enemy is, and it isn’t in the Māori Party leadership.

The inevitability of Mariameno and Doc being kicked out of the Party at the AGM and the invocation of the Waka Jumping legislation to trigger 2 by-elections has actually built in the last 72 hours.

Their point blank refusal to acknowledge the role they have had in the current meltdown suggests there is no alternative but 2 by-elections.

Let’s be very clear.

This entire meltdown was triggered by a leadership challenge because Debbie and Rawiri weren’t ‘tikanga enough’. When the Party should have been celebrating their by-election win, Treaty Referendum protests and not getting pinged once for any of the corruption allegations, two of their own put their egos before the waka and plotted a leadership coup.

Debbie and Rawiri deserved loyalty, not plotting.

Despite being the architect of the Māori Party success, JT has 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.

If a by-election is to occur, I believe te Pati Māori’s only option is to ask Hone to stand for them.

He has a mana and honour beyond reproach and a Hone victory for te Pati Māori would be a reset that was meaningful.

In a Mariameno vs Willow vs Hone showdown, Hone would have a very good chance of victory.

Returning Hone to Parliament would be the Māori Party’s greatest coup, it’s one worth having a by-election for.

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