With no majority since June, the tavana of Tumara’a, Gérard Goltz, could not alone trigger a new election. With the resignations of the Tapura ‘Āmui elected members, in addition to those from his own group, the threshold of a third of vacant seats required for the holding of early elections becomes attainable. The resignations now await the High Commissioner’s act to call voters back to the polls and pull Tumara’a out of the political crisis into which the commune has sunk in recent months.
The commune of Tumara’a, on Raiatea, is moving toward new municipal elections. On Friday evening, the elected representatives from the two groups on the council, Te Reo o te Nunaa, led by tavana Gérard Goltz, and the Tapura ‘Āmui, resigned. They remain municipal councillors until the High Commissioner officially records their departure. “As long as we are in office, we have the duty to continue working, until the last minute,” emphasizes Naumi Mihuraa, deputy mayor of Tevaitoa, whose Te Reo o te Nunaa union list won at the end of March by a narrow margin of a few dozen votes over Tapura ‘Āmui.
The resignations of the Tapura ‘Āmui electeds were essential to unlock the possibility of new early elections, desired by the mayor who had lost his majority after several of his allies shifted sides. These elections are indeed compulsory if a third of the council seats become vacant, i.e., at least nine resignations as well as those of the next on the list, and the mayor’s camp did not have the number of signatures needed to call a return to the polls.
According to TNTV, the tavana asked Cyril Tetuanui, former mayor and a figure of the Tapura ‘Āmui, to persuade the members of his group to resign. Gérard Goltz explains that the idea had already been circulating: one Tapura ‘Āmui councillor told him that they were “going around in circles” and that it would be better to return to the voters. The majority-less tavana had notably withdrawn delegations from those who opposed him, and many projects were at a standstill. The Tapura ‘Āmui legislators thus stated in a communiqué that they had taken this decision “unanimously” to get out of the impasse, by “giving back to the people the power to freely choose those who will represent them.”
“It is possible to engage in politics without spending all your time tearing each other apart.”
In a message posted on her Facebook page, Naumi Mihuraa, who had briefly lost her post as Tevaitoa deputy mayor and then regained it following a ruling by the administrative court, offers a bleak appraisal of the situation. Her group, she believes, has “never really” been able to work calmly, between those who did not accept her victory and the personal ambitions of some of her own members. She jokes about a “premium subscription to the administrative court,” a nod to the litigation of recent months, and acknowledges that “not everything has been perfect, far from it.”
The next steps now depend on the High Commission’s decision. The two factions are consulting their support committees this weekend and are already preparing their lists, TNTV reports. A first meeting had been scheduled for Saturday morning at the tavana’s office. Naumi Mihuraa hopes to conduct this campaign differently from the previous one, which “deeply divided” the commune. “It is possible to do politics without spending all your time tearing each other apart,” she pleads. She now calls on the groups to campaign with respect and to accept “the choice of the population.”
