Toma wins

hot election

A HEATED by-election on January 14 saw Ben Toma returned as Cook Islands’ Member of Parlia ment for the small, isolated pearl farming island of Manihiki. Toma, a Member of Parliament for Manihiki for the past eight years, was returned by 73 votes. There was a 91.5 per cent voter turnout.

Toma hit the headlines last year when he crossed the floor from the Opposition Democrat Taokoti Party to join the governing Cook Islands Party. His defec tion gave the government the two-thirds majority they were seeking to ammend the Constitution.

But Toma lost his seat soon after when the court ruled in favour of a Democrat Taokotai Party challenge which sought Toma’s disqualification on the grounds he was living mostly outside the Cook Islands.

In the by-election that followed, Toma faced Democrat Taokotai candidate Dr Robert Woonton, a Manihikian who is a private doctor in Rarotonga. The Oppo sition used the elction campaign to focus attention on the pearl industry, claiming local farmers were getting a bad deal.

Toma, on the other hand, used the court challenge by the Opposition as the main thrust of his campaign. He claimed the Opposition had double standards. He said that when he was in the Opposition the party was happy to have him spending lots of time with his family in Australia. Yet when he switched sides

they immediately challenged his residen

tial status.

In the end it was the status of pearl farming, foreign investment and govern ment involvement in Manihiki that dominated the press and the speeches of the candidates. Things got so heated up that two nights before election the roof of the administration building was stoned during an attempt for a joint campaign meeting of the two parties in Manihiki.

Prime Minister Geoffrey Henry was reported as saying the constitutional changes would not affect the country very much. □