Mexican stand off in the Maori Party

It’s a two way Mexican standoff in the Maori Party with Hone ‘we’ll always have Paris’ Harawira refusing to jump and Tariana Turia desperately trying to push. That the possible schism and disintegration of the Maori Party is on the horizon over an angry email seems ludicrously simplistic, and of course it is.

What we are seeing is the symptom of a much deeper malaise within the Maori Party. Hone represents the honky baiting radical social justice faction who can’t stand the deal with National, Tariana is the more socially conservative pragmatist happy to exploit the entrepreneurial dynamic between National and corporate Iwi.

John Key needs this relationship if he’s to stay in power post 2011 and it’s creating friction within his own cabinet as the rugby world cup broadcasting fiasco exemplified.

But why the fury at Hone?

In the 1967 classic, ‘In the Heat of the Night’, Sydney Poiter as Virgil Tibbs slaps the face of the white boss man and the audience gasped.

That’s the same gasp that happened last week. In the end it wasn’t the throwing a sickie to skive off trip to Paris, (that unlike Rodney’s thousands only cost $1100 and Hone did pay for his partner). It wasn’t the white mofos, it was Hone’s defiance that drew such a vitriolic attack that has spooked his Party to the edge. In NZ, we likes our Maoris cuddly and non-threatening like Billy T James or Boba Fett. We’re not too keen on the angry defiant ones.