And I don't think for a minute that the Maori Party can hold Turia's Te Tai Hauauru seat.
The only surprise about Turia's announcement is that her co-leader didn't follow suit. Sharples will be 73 at the next election and doesn't have either the energy or focus to save his seat, let alone his party.
Him not retiring handicaps the party by not allowing the promotion of Flavell into the top spot.
With a new female face to replace Turia, they could at least present themselves as a fresh new look and a potential partner for Labour.
Sharples' comfort with National is just too obvious for anyone to believe they wouldn't back John Key over David Shearer if the Maori Party vote was the decider.
National rates a derisory party vote in the Maori electorates and doesn't even bother to stand candidates. Three out of four of those electors vote for left parties.
With Sharples as senior leader at the next election, the campaign strategy for Labour and Mana is simple.
Their candidates just need to repeat the line that a vote for the Maori Party is a vote for a National-Act government. Once that reality sinks into the subconscious of the electors, the Maori Party is toast.
I've always believed it's important for New Zealand politics to have independent Maori voices in Parliament outside the two main parties.
Common sense and political reality means MPs with a pro-Maori agenda in mainstream parties have to curtail their positions in the interests of the greater good of their party.
The opportunity was that by winning the seven Maori electorates, a Maori-focused party could be the decider in forming governments - whether left or right.
My advice when I was advising the Maori Party in its formation period was to back a Labour-led government when there was a choice.
However, if Labour didn't have the numbers even with its votes then it should opt into a National-led Cabinet. Its constituency would support the strategy, provided it kept its independence and got real gains.
Unfortunately, it achieved neither.
It is seen by enough of the Maori constituency as merely the brown caucus of the National Party.
Turia's reputation and respect was based on leaving the Labour Party to give Maori real political power. The sad irony is she and her two colleagues have become meek apologists for a Government that has Maori statistics worse then when Turia was a minister in the Helen Clark government.
If they had managed the strategy properly they would have all seven Maori seats instead of a tenuous hold on just three. They should rue the day they forced Harawira out.
He was their hope in keeping the door open to Labour while being able to sit in a National government. More importantly, it would have kept both wings of their party together.
Supporters like me then had to choose sides. It's a no-brainer for me. The rise of Labour in recent weeks and the space that Harawira has been able to carve out means the future of the Maori Party is sealed.
Key needed the Maori Party rump to have any chance to be a third-term Prime Minister. This week, that option disappeared.
Debate on this article is now closed.</i>
