Summarised by Centrist
Te Pāti Māori’s internal crisis spilled further into public view at its AGM in Rotorua, where former Kiingitanga spokesperson Ngira Simmonds delivered an unusual challenge to the party leadership.
Speaking in te reo, he asked the question no one inside the movement appears willing to answer directly: “Who is the lion that bit Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Tākuta Ferris and Oriini Kaipara?”
It was a direct challenge to co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and party president John Tamihere, who have insisted the party’s discipline was justified.
Senior figures speak in metaphors about hurt, unity, kotahitanga (unity), and “biting each other’s backs”.
Simmonds’ pointed questions, who made the decisions, who authorised the expulsions, and who “attacked” whom, make plain that despite the scale of the fallout, no one has been willing to state clearly what the original problem actually was.
The official story is that two MPs, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris, were expelled for bringing the party into disrepute.
However, the High Court has now ruled that the process may have been unlawful, reinstating Kapa-Kingi’s membership and forcing the party to allow her back into the AGM.
Despite the ruling that Kapa-Kingi should return to the party pending a full hearing in February, Tamihere was unbending. Speaking after Simmonds, he insisted “no MP is above the party”, framing the unrest as a clash of personalities. “Without discipline, we descend into anarchy,” he told the gathering.
He rejected suggestions that his own presidency was part of the problem and told members to focus on next year’s election rather than internal dissent.
Ferris has since escalated the internal crisis by publicly accusing Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere of leading through utu and warning the party will lurch from one implosion to the next unless its leadership changes.
Read more over at The NZ Herald and The Post (paywalled)
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