Gearing up for election mode!

With the recent adoption of its Constitution, the Cook Islands Party is confident that it now has the mandate to set a pathway to prepare itself for the next general elections and work has already begun to this effect. This has taken a lot of work and effort to get to where we are today said a spokesperson and we are grateful for the contributions by many of our supporters and leaders who started this process over 4 years ago and is now finally completed.
This is believed to be the second time only in the history of the CIP that significant changes have been made to its Constitution since 1965. It is indeed a milestone because there are several major changes that have been made which includes completion of the Constitution, clarification as to the leadership issue, ultimate authority of political party issues being placed in the hands of the Conference and confirmation that any new policy direction or initiative or in fact, any deviation from set policies, must first seek the endorsement and support of the Conference.
The leadership issue has been one of the more important areas we have had to deal with and this has now been resolved. It simply means that as of the next general elections, the leader and deputy leader of the CIP will automatically assume their roles as PM and DPM assuming of course they win their seats in Parliament and that CIP wins government. The selection of deputy leader is at the sole discretion of the appointed leader. Should neither retain their seats, they must resign their positions and procedures have been included in the Constitution to elect a new leader and deputy.
We are delighted that Conference has affirmed also that any new policy initiatives or directions must first seek their approval. This means that a CIP-led government can no longer make major decisions that affect the interests of the people of this country without undertaking a process of consultation and to acquire their mandate first.
We have seen too many examples of poor decision making based on inadequate advice and lack of consultation. CIP takes the view that people’s voices and concerns are paramount and if they don’t agree with any major policy shift, we won’t touch it or possibly will have to reconsider it.
We are constantly reminded of what happened in September 2006 when we were at a disadvantage due to the dissolution of Parliament by the QR. We were definitely not prepared but this time, we are quietly confident that we are moving in the right direction to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes.
As for the sensitivities surrounding political reform, we have always made our intentions known in our election manifestos. That view remains however, CIP is not averse to “emotional persuasion” and we have developed a proposed policy framework that will address many of the concerns raised by the Economic Task Force and other political Reform interest groups.
This framework will be our platform amongst other initiatives, that will lead us into the elections and this will be announced in due course.
Meanwhile, we have started doing our groundwork to prepare our members for a general election. Effective as of 18 October 2009, all CIP Puna committees must go through a process of public re-election to ensure transparency and accountability to our supporters. Once this process is completed, nominations and selection of our candidates will begin. This is a major change because under our Constitution, once Parliament is dissolved, all CIP held seats will be given back to the constituencies to select their candidates. This takes away the notion that the seat belongs to the member of Parliament when in fact it belongs to the people.
We believe the time is right for change and that CIP will be presenting fresh new faces willing to take on the challenges for the mammoth task ahead in terms of addressing huge rising debts, further economic uncertainties, an out of control government, an ineffective public service and increasing social reliance on external aid assistance.