ELECTIONS: Aotearoa and DSA

Aotearoa

Rawiri Waititi, Maori Party MP for Waiariki

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Maori Party MP

Chloe Swarbrick, Green MP for Auckland Central

In the final tally, Labour won a clear 50% of seats (i.e.60 of the 120). National lost a further two seats so now has only 33 on the final tally.  

As we  hoped, the Maori Party now has two MPs, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (one electorate seat and one list MP). 

 The Greens have earned  10 seats on the party Vote, including one electorate MP, Chloe Swarbrick, who won the Auckland Central seat for the Greens for the first time and 9 list MPs), and the Act Party also has 10 seats- 9 list MPs and the long-serving leader David Seymour in the Epson Electorate seat.

Jacinda Ardern, our Prime Minister, has announced her cabinet, and 50% of them are Maori, Pasifika or Asian MPs. for the full list see:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300147743/the-full-list-of-prime-minister-jacinda-arderns-new-cabinet 

We hope that with this overwhelming mandate, the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with Green and Maori Party support, will take a much braver approach to dealing with issues like poverty, homelessness, climate change and the inadequacies of our health, justice and welfare support systems.

(Note: Our MMP system is working well, on the whole, but improvements still need to be made in the information and voting forms available in the 2800 and more polling booths throughout the country- Some Maori voters could not vote on the Maori roll because of the lack of the right voting papers.)

Divided States of America

Results are still awaited for these elections, and many of us have a feeling of dread as we watch the unbelievably deceitful and ridiculous performance of the still-current President Trump, and the violent and hate-filled processions of his supporters in some states.  Our friends in the USA are very glad that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have a very clear lead on votes counted and authenticated, but many of those who support Trump are convinced   that this will all be overturned.

The whole process is so convoluted, and until the Electoral College has met and voted- and the results of this are not predetermined by the total votes for the presidential candidates, nor by the number of states won by each, apparently- we don’t know the result.  We can only hope that reason and good sense and honesty will triumph over bitterness, hatred, conspiracy theories and outright lies…

We are glad our elections are over , and the results , on the whole, pleasing  (to us and our friends!) but we were very relieved to be able to turn off the television and go away for a holiday.