Maybe if Eru hadn’t burnt all the Treaty Principles Referendum good will we wouldn’t be facing Winston’s attack on the Māori Electorates?
The fight over Aotearoa’s constitutional foundations is back. With Winston Peters floating a referendum targeting the Māori electorates, the unity that stopped the Treaty Principles Referendum in 2025 feels fractured. The question now isn’t just about electoral law — it’s about whether protest movements can hold together when political capital matters most.
Winston Peters and the Push Against the Māori Electorates
With Matua Winston threatening a referendum against the Māori Electorates, we need Early 2025 Eru, not the one we have now.
The 2025 Treaty Principles Referendum Mobilisation
The one who helped lead hundreds of thousands against the horrific Treaty Principles Referendum because make no mistake, what Winston is proposing is as damaging as what Seymour was attempting.
Winston is upholding democracy by mutilating the Māori electorates, he is arguing for majoritarianism which has all the morality of two wolves and a lamb voting who should be lunch.
Allowing the majority to decide the rights of the minority is the very worst type of politics and is exactly what Seymour was trying with his Referendum.
Fractures Within the Protest Movement
Unfortunately Eru decided to firebomb the Māori Party Marae and set off a civil war that has burnt so much good will and political capital that his protest last week early drew hundreds.
From hundreds of thousands, to hundreds. That is an enormous fall from grace.
Eru seemed to have mistaken the vast support against the Treaty Principles Referendum as support for him as leader and that has resulted in effectively losing the power of Toitū Te Tiriti to push back when something as brutal as an attempt to destroy the Māori electorates rears its ugly head.
We need Toitū Te Tiriti more in 2026 than we did in 2025 yet the movement has managed to burn itself out with infighting between Te Pāti Māori and Toitū Te Tiriti.
Why 2026 Will Test Toitū Te Tiriti
Everything that can go wrong for the protest movement after such an amazing display of solidarity in 2025 seems to be going wrong.
Every Kiwi should be disgusted with whet Winston is attempting to do here with this dog whistle.
He is appealing to the worst angels of our nature by using te Pāti Māori as a means to purposely amputate Māori Electorates in to a situation where the bigoted majority will determine the rights of the minority.
You don’t have to be a Māori on the Māori Roll to be outraged by that pandering to bigots.
If the majority can vote away minority representation, then democracy becomes arithmetic stripped of justice. The debate over the Māori electorates is not just procedural — it is a test of whether Aotearoa understands the difference between majority rule and constitutional protection.
