The Inevitable Implosion: How Te Pāti Māori’s Rejection of Westminster Democracy Made the 2025 Chaos Predictable

The past three months have been brutal for Te Pāti Māori. Expulsions, leaked emails, budget scandals, family feuds, and public accusations of “dictatorship” have shredded the party’s image. On 10 November 2025 the national council voted to expel two of its six MPs — Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris — for alleged breaches of the party’s kawa (constitution). Both have vowed to fight on as independents, and the fallout is still spreading.

Many commentators have treated this as a shocking meltdown. In reality, it is the entirely predictable consequence of a party that explicitly rejects Westminster parliamentary democracy in favour of governance by tikanga Māori.

The Core Contradiction

Te Pāti Māori’s constitution is not a conventional rule-book. It is built on Māori values — whanaungatanga, mana, kaitiakitanga, kotahitanga — and deliberately subordinates “colonial” democratic mechanisms (fixed terms, transparent voting, judicial review) to tikanga processes. Co-leader Rawiri Waititi has said openly that he is “not a fan of democracy” because it is a Pākehā import that dilutes tino rangatiratanga.

That stance is principled and consistent with the party’s founding mission. The problem is that the party still has to operate inside a Westminster Parliament and inside a country whose legal and political systems are built on democratic norms. When tikanga is the only real enforcement mechanism, power ultimately rests on personal relationships, cultural authority, and whoever controls the hui. That works beautifully in a marae setting with high trust and shared history. It is far less stable inside a modern political party with six MPs, a national office, taxpayer funding, and competing ambitions.

 How It Unravelled (September–November 2025)

• Late SeptemberTākuta Ferris posts a series of statements questioning whether non-Māori should stand in Māori electorates, framing it as a breach of tikanga. The party initially apologises, then lets him double-down.

• 27 SeptemberOriini Kaipara wins the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election, lifting the party to seven MPs and briefly pushing its polling to 7–8 %.

• 2 OctoberEru Kapa-Kingi (son of MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and a senior Toitū Te Tiriti organiser) goes public accusing the leadership of running a “dictatorship model” that sidelines branches and breaches the constitution.

• Early OctoberReports emerge of a $133,000 parliamentary office budget overspend linked to Mariameno Kapa-Kingi hiring her son as a contractor.

• 9 October – the pivotal day

  • Afternoon: Oriini Kaipara delivers her maiden speech.

  • Immediately after: supporters in the gallery (and some MPs) perform an unsanctioned haka of solidarity. Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspends the House for ten minutes and later announces a review of gallery rules.

  • Later the same afternoon: co-leaders hold a press conference downstairs in Parliament’s Grand Hall to announce a “reset” built on “direction, discipline, and delivery”. The event is meant to draw a line under the scandals, but reporters focus on the morning’s disruption and the dictatorship allegations. The reset lasts less than four minutes of actual questions.

• 10–31 OctoberThe reset collapses almost immediately. Leaked emails surface containing allegations of bullying and threats. John Tamihere posts on Facebook urging the two MPs to “do the honourable thing” and resign. Branches complain they have been frozen out of decision-making.

• 10 NovemberThe national council (meeting without John Tamihere, who is overseas) votes to expel Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris. The expelled MPs call the process unconstitutional and vow court action — ironically turning to the colonial legal system the party usually rejects.

Why Tikanga Alone Can’t Hold a Modern Political Party Together

Tikanga is interpretive, relational, and context-specific. What counts as a breach of kawa is ultimately decided by whoever has the mana to speak last in the room. When trust is high, that works. When trust collapses — as it has in Te Pāti Māori in 2025 — there is no neutral referee, no transparent ballot, no independent audit trail. Power flows to the centre, and dissent is framed as a breach of whanaungatanga rather than legitimate democratic disagreement.

That is exactly what critics inside and outside the party are now saying: the leadership used tikanga as a justification to centralise control and silence opposition, while simultaneously claiming the moral high ground of cultural authenticity.

The Bigger Picture

None of this invalidates the broader project of asserting tino rangatiratanga or incorporating tikanga into public life. It simply shows that trying to run a Westminster-elected political party purely on tikanga, without robust democratic guardrails, is a high-risk experiment. The 2025 ructions are not an aberration; they are the experiment reaching its logical stress point.

Until Te Pāti Māori (or any future Māori sovereignty party) finds a workable hybrid — genuine tikanga accountability plus boring but essential democratic transparency — these cycles of euphoria and implosion will keep repeating.

The chaos of 2025 was not bad luck. It was baked in from the day the party decided democracy itself was part of the problem.

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Rodney Hide:

"I did not write this. Grok did. On November 24, 2025. I gave the following prompt: 

Write me a blog post explaining the recent ructions in Te pati Maori are perfectly understandable because the party itself rejects democracy and Westminster parliamentary tradition in favour of Tikanga. 

The blog was written in seconds. 

Who needs the MSM?  AI will write our news and analysis for us. On demand. Curated to our likes and wants. We are each going to have our own news."