RAROTONGA, 19 FEBRUARY 2019 (RADIO COOK ISLANDS NEWS) – The Cook Islands Party will not contest the Tengatangi-Areora-Ngatiarua by-election on Atiu.
Instead the party will rally their support behind the young Tehani Brown.
The young politician has indicated her support for the Government of the day, “for us, we’ll be supporting Tehani as our candidate standing under the Independent banner which will allow her to support the Government of the day without the effects of the anti-hopping legislation interfering with her in any way,” says deputy Prime Minister Mark Brown, “she has shown a lot of guts, a lot of determination in making this move. There are not many members of Parliament who will give up their seat back to their constituency and expect them to vote them back under a different banner. We’re confident she will win her seat.”
Brown says while there is strong CIP support for Tehani, what they’ve seen here is the case of the people voting for the person and not so much for the party, “and Tehani has been seen as the person brining new youthful vigour into Parliament, somebody who in a very short time-frame has been able to do so many things in her constituency. She’s also been able to see what the Government has been doing in terms of its larger work programme through Nga Pu Toru and the outer islands, and she want to support that, and that’s what the people of Atiu want as well,” says Minister Brown.
He says in all meetings he has attended in Atiu, there has been widespread support both from the Democratic Party and Cook Islands Party camps for Tehani to be the candidate.
Meanwhile, it was announced last week that former CIP candidate, and interim President of the Cook Islands United Party, Nandi Glassie will be standing in the by-election under the Democratic Party banner.
“What this signifies to me is again, the dysfunction occurring within the Democratic Party in that they couldn’t even get a member from the Democratic Party to stand for them, that they had to get the President of the Cook Islands United Party to stand as a Demo candidate. To me, this signals weakness in the Democratic Party,” says Minister Brown.
Leader of the Democratic Party, Tina Browne says she is quite happy with the way things are going, “if you look at the figures of results of the last election, Tehani had 71, Nandi had 48 and Norman George with 7, it appears that the Democratic Party is split. Some will go, I’m told, Independent, and the staunch Demos will stay with the Demos, so if you do the figures it may not be a huge difference. I predict it’s going to be close,” says Browne.
The Atiu by-election takes place March 18 and so far, only Glassie and Brown have confirmed their candidacy. The nominations of candidates will close on 25 February.
