KEY POINTS:
To get Wong, Wang and Yang into Parliament, split your vote between the Kiwi Party and Act's Kenneth Wang.
This is the message the Kiwi Party candidate for Botany, Simon Kan, also known as Yang Kan, will be giving voters in the electorate.
Asking voters to split their
votes between Wang and the Kiwi Party is a strategy to get three Chinese MPs from Botany into Parliament, Mr Kan says.
"My message is don't waste your electorate vote on Pansy [Wong], and don't waste your party vote on Act, because both Pansy and Kenneth [Wang] don't need them to get back into Parliament," he said.
"There has never been an opportunity like this for the Chinese in New Zealand, so if Botany votes wisely, we could see four Chinese MPs in Parliament."
His campaign follows the Act Party's "vote Wang, get Wang and Wong" billboards, which resulted in a complaint to the Electoral Commission from list MP Pansy Wong, National's candidate in the electorate.
Mr Kan, who is number 3 on the Kiwi Party list, said he decided to stand for Botany last week after originally planning to stand in New Lynn because he found the Chinese voters there to be "mainly Labour supporters", unlike Botany.
"The Chinese will not be as lucky as the Maori, where we have our own seats, so to get more MPs, we have to fight hard and have our own strategies," he said.
Botany was not a "Chinese battleground" but an "opportunity electorate" where Chinese could vote strategically to get more Chinese MPs into Parliament.
"The equation is simple, Pansy is safe on National's list, and Kenneth doesn't need the party vote because he is not on Act's list," said Mr Kan.
"An electorate vote for me is wasted, but give it to Kenneth and a party vote to the Kiwi Party, and all three of us will be going to Parliament. It will be good for the Chinese, for Asians and for the whole nation."
This week, Mr Kan will be putting up billboards, writing articles in the Chinese media and distributing pamphlets in English and Chinese to explain his strategy.
"I also want to make it clear that the Chinese candidates in Botany are not fighting each other, but are working with each other to achieve the same goal, but in different ways," said Mr Kan, a Chinese newspaper columnist, who had previously criticised Chinese candidates standing in the same electorate, saying it was "a silly thing to do".
He said then: "A Chinese MP would have a far bigger moral victory if he or she had won the electorate against a mainstream candidate."
Pansy Wong, who is aiming to become the country's first Asian electorate MP after 12 years as a list MP, is not amused by Mr Kan's election stunt.
"I have knocked on 4000 doors in Botany, and campaigned since October and I am committed to winning the electorate," she said.
But, Mr Wang said that although he was also campaigning for party votes for Act, he did not have any strong reaction to Mr Kan's campaign asking voters to split their votes between the Kiwi Party and himself.
"This is a democracy, and part of a democracy is a competition of ideas. At the end of the day, the people will decide which is best."