Alamein Kopu dies

Alamein Kopu has died:

Alamein Kopu, the politician whose defection from the Alliance prompted the “waka jumping” legislation in the late 1990s, has died, aged in her early 70s.

Mrs Kopu prompted constitutional head-scratching when she quit as an Alliance list MP in 1997 to become an independent MP.

It was the first term of the new MMP electoral system, and raised the question of whether list MPs could remain in Parliament if they quit the party, under whose banner they were elected. Mrs Kopu turned up the heat when she then used her vote to prop up an ailing National government, in effect switching her vote from the Left side of the House to the Right.

While it was a serious issue, Mrs Kopu was often painted as a comical figure, whose attendance was sporadic and workrate low, and who was seen as taking an MP’s salary for doing little.

Her defenders saw her as a victim of the adversarial British-model political system, and hailed her as a worker for Maori, who improved the lot of her constituents.

In the 1996 election, Mrs Kopu had contested Te Tai Rawhiti, and was ranked 12th on the Alliance list – a mish-mash of minor parties under leadership of Jim Anderton.

The Alliance received enough party votes for her to enter Parliament off its list, for the Maori rights party Mana Motuhake. But only nine months after her election she resigned from the Alliance.