Few Cook Islanders interested in voting

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33702, 27 November 1974, Page 1

Few Cook Islanders interested in voting

The vast majority, of Cook Islanders in New Zealand are not interested in returning to the Cook Islands to vote in next week’s General Election there, said a Christchurch Cook Islands woman, and secretary of the Cook Islands Group in the city, last evening.

Mrs M. Oberg, who emigrated from the Cook Islands in 1945, said that the success of the Cook Island Democratic Party in New Zealand in chartering a Trans International Airlines stretched-version DCS aircraft would not change the minds of many Cook Islanders.

Mrs Oberg bases her opinion oh the general feeling among Christchurch’s 25 to 30 Cook Islanders, of whom about 10 are eligible to vote. From her knowledge of the Cook Islands people, the feelings of the reported 800 or so eligible voters in New Zealand would be very similar, she said yesterday. “We chose to come out here, we work here, we live here, we vote, for the New Zealand Government. We cannot live two lives,” she said. “We have not cut ties with the Cook Islands, but the General Election is the business of those in the islands, not those who have made their homes in another country.” “RESPONDED WISELY” She believed that the Prime Minister (Mr Rowling) had responded wisely to the pressure from the Democratic J

Party for an aircraft for voters. Had Mr Rowling given them the plane, their demands would never have stopped. Mrs Oberg said. They would have asked for one to bring them back, A' spokesman for the Cook Island Democratic Party (Mr K. Hickson) said that the three-flight charter would cost $113,000, a return fare per person of $lB6, according to a Press Association message from Wellington. The normal cost of the flight was $269 return. Voters would have four hours before their flight returned to New Zealand.

Mr Hickson said that 887 registered Cook Islands voters were living in New Zealand. The aircraft would be able to carry 221 people in each flight. It was planned to have at least one flight arrive at Rarotonga on election day, and the other two probably on the Friday and preceding Monday. Voters arriving on the flights before election day would be able to cast special votes. Mrs Oberg said that the Democratic Party, based in Auckland, was motivated by a personal envy of the island’s premier (Sir Albert Henry); the group resented his rise to power. The group was a small and vocal minority whose influence in Auck-

land and Wellington, in conjunction with the visit of the Opposition leader (Dr T. R. A. Davis), had been damaging, because many Islanders would have been naive enough to believe the group’s reports of Sir Albert. Islanders were not used to hearing Parliamentary parties speak ill of each other —it was not the political style in the Cook Islands, and they would have been very credulous, Mrs Oberg said. RESENTMENT

The Democratic Party also knew that few who returned would be able to vote, but was interested in getting as many as possible on the flights, to influence their i families against the Premier.; There were also some in; the islands who would resent; the return of New Zealand. Cook Islanders to vote. Once out of the islands, some Cook Islanders tended to “make their own lives,” with diminishing regard for their; families; and their families would resent their intrusion as voters wanting the best of both worlds. Mrs Oberg said that her; last visit to the Cook Islands in 1972 coincided with the General Election, but she would have been unable to vote had she wanted to because she had not been resident in the islands for three months before the election.