By L.F. Brown
15 September 2004
The Australian Labor Party’s education policy is a sop to the Catholic vote. Yawn. Different election, same angle.
A Model D IBM typewriter could have reproduced the memos about George W. Bush in the 1970s. Zzzzzzzzzz.
Contact with the Cook Islands’ only patrol boat that has been collecting ballots in the northern islands has been lost for three days. I wiped the drool off my keyboard.
The news report, from Thursday the 14th, added that boats went out of radio contact all the time in the northern areas and that authorities thus didn’t fear it was missing. A day later it was still missing, with the Democratic Party ready to claim victory in the national elections within 24 hours. And then a few hours ago they did, with fourteen of the seats, versus the opposition Cook Islands Party’s nine seats, with a split vote on the northern island of Rakahanga.
The results should have been in on Wednesday the 9th when the five-yearly elections (now to be every four years thanks to the overwhelming referendum vote on the same day) were held for the 25-member Cook Islands’ lower house of parliament, 24 of them representing those on the island and one for those living outside of the Cook Islands. Which is quite a few members considering that there were 9,700 registered voters for the poll, with the total resident population coming in at approximately 13,400 people. This may be one of the reasons why a lot of voter dissatisfaction was reported before the election, but nothing which a bit of pork couldn’t help solve, sometimes even literally, with pigs being dished out for family events.
As for the big seats in this group of islands situated about half way between Hawaii and New Zealand, Prime Minister Dr Robert Woonton of the Democratic Party beat out the opposition Cook Islands Party President Henry Puna for his Manihiki seat by four votes, with the final tally being 142-138 after being 15 votes behind at one stage. It is not clear though that he will be elected Prime Minister by the parliament, with former PM and Democratic Party leader Dr Tereapai Maoate in the running to oust him after he himself was ousted in 2002. Using a Westminster-style system, the Prime Minister is chosen by the majority party.
The controversial former cabinet minister Norman George, who recently formed the Tumu Enua Party and held the balance of power (and has also been unfavourably compared to New Zealand rabblerouser Winston Peters), lost his seat to the Democratic Party’s Eugene Tatuava by 67 to 73 votes. He cried foul, claiming that ballot boxes had been tampered with. Maybe he can take it up with election observers who were present, who recommended to the government that the electoral office be computerised.
Where the money would come from is another story. The Cook Islands, which became “self-governing in association with New Zealand” in August 1965 after it was earlier made a protectorate in 1888 by the British, is a country in decline, as evidenced by the departure of its citizens overseas, mainly to New Zealand where they are also eligible for New Zealand citizenship. The ratio of those Cook Islanders who live outside of it compared to inside is three to one. Infrastructure is weak. And although it has some sort of agricultural industry with citrus and copra (from coconuts) products, along with tourism, manufacturing (fruit-processing, clothing, and handicrafts) and black pearl production, it still relies on millions of dollars of aid from New Zealand (although it also gets aid from Australia as well as being a recent recipient of $NZ4 million from China for recognising Beijing’s “ownership of Taiwan.”) Another boat would also be good.
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