Government decision on referendum pleases GPC

Political reformists were all smiles Thursday despite the fact only one of the six questions they’d hoped would be put to the voting public via a binding referendum on election day has been approved by Cabinet.
That question – “Should there be a reduction in the number of MPs?” – was considered the most important issue to members of the Group for Political Change and Mou Piri.
“We’re very pleased,” said GPC’s Lynnsay Francis after she, fellow GPCer Tere Carr and legal counsel Tim Arnold huddled with Prime Minister Jim Marurai behind closed doors.
According to a press release from the prime minister’s office, the referendum questions were whittled down to a single query in an effort to bring focus to the ongoing debate on political reform.
“The electorate would be better informed if there was just one issue on which to decide,” according to the release.
“The prime minister said, in their discussion in Cabinet, that they felt if they put all the other issues onto the referendum, that it would only confuse people,” said Francis. “That was the position the GPC took when we went out to conduct our survey with people right around the island: we wanted to address the issue of reducing the seats. We felt it was achievable.”
Making the referendum binding means if two-thirds of the voters agree that there should be a culling of MPs, the question will then move on to Parliament, where a two-thirds majority is also needed for further action. Should that percentage not be achieved, or if a new government is voted in, then the referendum will die a quick death.
For her part, Mou Piri leader Teina Mackenzie was reading between the lines when it came to yesterday’s agreement.
“(Government) said it will be binding but the undertone of that is, ‘put us back in and we’ll do that for you’,” she said. “The Mou Piri stance is that each individual has the ability to make sure that becomes binding because they tell the candidate they are voting for to make sure it’s binding when they get in (to Parliament). Say to them, this is what the majority has asked for, so you need to put this through.”
Mackenzie considered the question of reducing MP numbers to be the most important issue because it required the most work to be done.
“It requires constitutional amendment and it requires the people to absolutely confirm that’s what they want,” she said. “It is the issue that required the most in-depth process.”
Francis noted that the remaining five questions the various reformists had pushed to be on the referendum – including if the prime minister should be elected by all Cook Islands voters – are not about to be brushed aside.
“We’re saying, well let’s actually address the issue that is more pressing to people in the community at the moment,” she said. “We can address the other issues later. Just because they’ve been dropped from the referendum, it doesn’t mean to say they’ve been dropped from the ongoing debate on political reform. There are other ways and other strategies of addressing those issues.
“It’s an ongoing process. This doesn’t mean reform stops here. It evolves.”
Mackenzie was too pragmatic to label government’s referendum decision as a ‘victory’.
“Every development is one step forward and is a positive,” she said. “The more we concentrate on going forward, the more we will achieve.”

By John Ireland

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