Political reform takes centre stage

The proposals for political reform have taken centre stage with the ‘ideas already mapped’ and presented to the Prime Minister, Jim Marurai by Iaveta Short and Tata Crocombe, who are both long time advocates of changing the political system.
Further meetings have been arranged right up until next Tuesday to work out the process and to hold consultations and then briefing Cabinet on the proposals next Tuesday morning.
The PM is so enthusiastic about reform that he has already announced that there will be a referendum held during the upcoming elections this year.
The proposals are still a work in progress so precisely what propositions will be put to the Iti Tangata in the referendum are not known but it has been confirmed by a spokesman for the PM that the concepts are based on the proposals put out in 2009 by the Economic Taskforce .
The proposals include: choosing the PM by
reducing the number of MPs (to reflect the decline of population), having 9 constituent seats (instead of 24 ), having 10 ‘national seats’ with reps chosen from a national ‘list’ (in a roughly similar way as the List MPs in NZ).
Some islands will lose their representation all together, such as the proposal for one MP only for Ngaputoru under this system.
Other changes proposed are to have the PM chosen by popular vote from the candidate who receives the most votes out of the ‘list’ of national MPs (which would take our system to more like that of USA instead of England with a Prime Minister who by convention is the leader of the political party which can command the confidence of the majority of Parliament.
The political reform is sure to be put to the test in Mangaia, with many people there saying they agree with the notion of having only one MP in the House instead of three but this is not a universal view especially not the CIP camp there.

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