Rawiri Waititi’s Potential Win Marks Maori Party’s Return to Parliament

If the special votes confirm Waititi’s win, the Maori Party will be back in Parliament for the first time since 2017.

Maori Party MP Rawiri Waititi won the Waiariki electorate seat by just 415 votes. Waititi won by such a narrow margin that his opponent, Labour Party MP Tamati Coffey, has asked to wait for the tabulation of special votes before announcing the winner.  

“In the last election I benefited from some special votes, and I think that actually we need to wait till those come in until we draw definitive results from tonight’s election,” said Coffey on October 17. The special votes results will be announced on November 6.  

Other members of the Maori Party lost all six other Maori electorates to Labour Party MPs, including Maori Party co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and John Tamihere. While disappointed in her loss, Ngarewa-Packer expressed her pride for Waititi and for the Maori Party as a whole.  

“Clearly it shows that with all the odds stacked against us, that we are back. And Waiariki has just proven that point,” said Ngarewa-Packer. If the results of the special votes confirm Waititi’s win in Waiariki, it will mark the return of the Maori Party to the New Zealand Parliament since losing all its seats in the 2017 election. The Labour Party has controlled all seven Maori electorates since then. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, leader of the Labour Party, cited this competition between the two parties as to why she did not reach out to the Maori Party for coalition discussions. The Labour Party has 15 Maori MPs, which makes it the party with the largest number of Maori MPs. Waititi himself left the Labour Party in 2014 to join the Maori Party. Waititi said he did not want to be “subjugated into a mainstream party” and did not necessarily agree with the messages of the Labour Party.  

Waititi says that he aims to stand up for the Maori people in New Zealand. He claims that the current system subjugates Maori people and said that the Covid-19 pandemic has spotlighted how Maori people received the treatment of “second class citizens.” Legislation which almost passed under the Covid-19 Health Response Bill would have allowed police to search homes or marae (sacred communal grounds for a Maori tribe or tribal sub-unit) without warrants. Waititi called on the Labour Maori caucus to take more action, saying that “no Maori in their right mind would allow” for such legislation to pass. 

Waititi proudly supported his Maori culture, and will even stand as the first MP in 150 years to have the traditional Maori facial tattoos, known as the moko. He and the other Maori Party leaders hope that by the 2023 elections, the Maori Party will retake more seats in Parliament and regain the Maori electorates. 

“The rejuvenation of our Maori movement is well and truly in play,” Waititi said when he arrived at Parliament on October 19.