Just waving it in your face:
"New Zealand’s ruling National Party is reelected" by Jonathan Hutchison | New York Times September 21, 2014
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — The dominant center-right National Party was elected on Saturday to head the government for a third consecutive time. It received a historic level of support, despite an election campaign tainted by political scandals and resignations.
The party’s large lead became apparent early in the evening. When counting finished, it had won 48 percent of the vote, the strongest result for a single party since New Zealand adopted a proportional election system in 1996, according to preliminary results from the national Electoral Commission.
The commission estimated voter turnout at 77 percent, up from 74 percent in 2011.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a victory for those who kept the faith,” John Key, the prime minister and leader of the National Party, said in a televised speech at the party’s election celebration in downtown Auckland. The jubilant audience responded with a chant of “Three more years!”
The result gives the National Party 61 of the 121 seats in Parliament, enough to govern alone, although Key said he would work on forming a coalition with the three smaller parties that are part of the existing coalition: the ACT New Zealand Party, United Future, and the Maori Party.
Key was greeted outside his Auckland home with a rousing haka, or Maori war dance, as he left for the celebration.
A short time earlier, the leader of the left-leaning opposition Labor Party, David Cunliffe, said he had already telephoned Key to concede defeat. But he insisted that he did not intend to resign, even though his party had won only 25 percent of the vote.
“It will of course take the pundits some time to work through the entrails of this election,” Cunliffe said in a televised speech to Labor Party supporters in the west Auckland suburb of New Lynn.
“On the face of it, there’s never been one like it: a campaign beset by dirty politics and sideshows, involving potential abuses of power at the highest level that will still take months and months to unravel. But New Zealanders have chosen to continue, and we respect that choice.”
Hmmmm. Smells like Scotland.
He was apparently referring to campaign scandals that led to resignation of a senior minister and Parliament member.
The New Zealand electoral system allows two votes: one for a political party, and one for a candidate in a local election district.
A party can enter Parliament by winning either an election district seat or at least 5 percent of the party vote.
The Internet Mana party — a political alliance between the Mana Movement and the Internet Party, founded and bankrolled by Kim Dotcom, the German entrepreneur accused of widespread Internet piracy — failed to win a seat in Parliament.
Its main candidate, Hone Harawira, lost his local race, and Internet Mana’s 1.26 percent of the party vote fell well short of the 5 percent needed.
The Internet Party leader, Laila Harré, blamed the National Party for undermining Harawira’s support, but Dotcom disagreed.
“I take full responsibility for this loss tonight, because the brand — the brand Kim Dotcom — was poison for what we were trying to achieve,” he told reporters. “I did not see that before, and it only became apparent to me in the last couple of weeks.”
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Related: New Zealand Sucked Into NSA Scandal
They are one of the Five Eyes.
