Clan Gathers

The Henry

For 1965

From a Special Correspondent About 80 people were on the wharf at Avarua to hear the speech of welcome when political leader Mr. Albert Henry, with Mrs. Henry, returned in mid- December from self-imposed exile in New Zealand, to live per

manently in Rarotonga.

THE smallness of the crowd dis appointed his friends in the Cook Islands Party who regard him as something of a Messiah but there had been counter-attractions— including the arrival of a chartered aircraft with children returning from school for the Christmas holidays.

The supporters of Mr. Henry did better that evening when about 350, almost all Maori, sat down to an elaborate umikai to celebrate his re turn. There was talk of nationalism and “the way of our fathers”.

If the welcome-home to the Cooks was somewhat quieter than expected, the Henry’s departure from Auckland got full newspaper treatment.

Shortly before they left NZ, two petitions signed by Cook Islanders living in the Dominion had been presented to the Government. They asked that a referendum be taken in the Cooks before the new Con stitution comes into effect.

"Future Premier"

The petitions were turned down —mainly because the only referendum that could be taken was whether or not the Cooks should have internal self-government, and this had already been decided by the Cl Legislative Assembly. Further, said a Government spokesman, the Constitution is not inflexible and can be changed at any time if two thirds of the members of the As sembly want it changed.

Mr. Henry, according to one newspaper which was already calling him “the future premier of the Cook Islands”, professed himself puzzled by the petitions and appeared to see in them some sort of plot.

“I’ve a pretty good idea who is behind it,” he was quoted as saying, “and 1 believe there is a group in the Cook Is. and NZ who would

benefit by a delay in the intro duction of the new Constitution.”

The only benefit Albert Henry could get out of an amended Con stitution would be if the three year residential clause for Assembly candidates were dropped. As things are at present, Albert, whether “future premier” or not, is barred from standing at the forthcoming elections because he hasn’t lived in the Cooks for the three years past.

When he left Auckland in early December he said that he still hoped that this “residential difficulty can be overcome”; he also was “con fident” that his Cook Islands Party would win 18 of the 23 seats at the elections.

Albert Henry may be the re vitalising influence that the Cook Islands need but if conservative elements in the Cooks who re member his record in the years before he went off permanently to New Zealand in 1948 (to “educate his children”) are entertaining a lot of misgivings, they cannot be blamed.

He'll Need Wisdom Perhaps Mr. Henry has learned caution and economic sense and has acquired the wisdom of Solomon in the years since 1948.

He’s going to need them all if he puts half his promises into practice —such as increasing the output of copra from its present 1,300 tons to 10,000 tons a year—without dis rupting and disorganising those enterprises that are already contri buting to the economy, A great deal of the talk engaged in, in the last year, by Albert Henry, his followers and the New Zealand Parliament seems to refer to a place with the size, scope and potential of a continent like Aus tralia and not the Cook Group at all.

Not enough people seem able to remember that the Cooks consist of 15 small islands, 93 sq. miles in total area, scattered over nearly a million square miles of ocean and populated by 18,000 Maoris, many of whom have only one ambition— permanent migration to New Zealand.

O A P-NG Department of Public Works survey team will investigate islands north of New Ireland in January for airstrip sites. The islands are Mussau and Emirau in the St.

Matthias Group, and Boang and Tabar Islands. There is an old wartime airstrip on Emirau.