Claire Trevett: Mana Party audience seems to have identity crisis

Hone Harawira. Photo / Chris Loufte

It was the dreadlocked Pakeha Rastafarian who bravely punctured the hype and sounded the most pertinent warnings at the launch of Hone Harawira's new Mana Party.

Former Green MP Nandor Tanczos said there was a need for a strong independent "progressive" political movement.

However, he gave some "cautions" - and they were not the ones Harawira or his avid supporters wanted to hear. The first was clearly aimed at the cult of personality Mr Harawira has arguably become.

"Leadership is needed, but many political parties are built round one person," Tanczos observed.

"[Those parties] have never been able to achieve what they are looking for. No person is infallible."

The man he was talking about arrived at the launch like a bride - later than everyone else to be welcomed on with his own separate powhiri and dressed in a korowai [feather cloak].

At the launch, Harawira sounded very much like a leader. He spoke strongly and with passion. It was a new Harawira than the defensive creature of past months, more mature and apparently aware that he alone had responsibility for the fate of this new party he had created.

Tanczos' second warning was equally pertinent - but one Harawira's wounded pride appears to have overridden: "it would be a tragedy to see the Mana Party and Maori Party go to war."

He appealed for Harawira's party to be broader-based so not only progressive Maori had a voice in Parliament, but progressive Pakeha also had the opportunity to take part. Whether Harawira decides there is room for those progressive Pakeha remains to be seen.

The launch was a mix of Maori activists, union activists, and social activists looking at each other suspiciously. The overriding impression was one of an identity crisis.

Harawira's initial aim was for a Maori party. Involving the union movement, socialists and other left-wing activists is an apparent bid to broaden his potential voting base.

His speech yesterday was replete with very long-standing union policies and rhetoric, much of which he openly admitted his strategist, Unite Union leader Matt McCarten, had put in.

The link appears to have been justified to Harawira on the basis that what helps all workers will help the unemployed and low paid Maori workers. That may be true, but come the day when Harawira starts to feel the union movement is effectively hijacking his new party and using him as a mouthpiece for its own means, things could become very uncomfortable indeed. Making matters worse is the potential line up.

In his speech, Mr Harawira sought to make a virtue out of refusing to compromise. The trouble is that those feeling out the new party to see if they wanted to be involved are equally as uncompromising as Harawira. Harawira, Annette Sykes, Margaret Mutu, Mereana Pitman, Sue Bradford, John Minto. There was not a second fiddle among them.

So far Sykes is the only one who appears to have given a concrete commitment to stand.

Selection of further candidates was a step Mr Harawira said would take some time and a considered balancing of the attributes of potential candidates.