TOP party leader pledges to take Christchurch to Wellington
It’s in with the old and the new for The Opportunities Party, whose leader declared on Wednesday night that he’d be taking Christchurch to Wellington.
Raf Manji, a high profile Christchurch figure, has officially launched his run for the Ilam electorate.
With it, he reaffirmed TOP’s commitment to political independence, overhauling the tax system and addressing the inaccessible property market – something on the minds of his University student-heavy electorate.
“Labour has spent too much time rearranging the deck chairs instead of fixing them,” he said.
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He said under the “Labour and National paradigm” basic infrastructure and jobs – for nurses, teachers and police – were underfunded.
He believed Labour and National were too comfortable in their Christchurch seats – it was why Christchurch was ignored, and why he was running.
“I spent 18 months in Wellington and I can tell you, they don’t pay attention to us,” he said.
Manji, a former two-term city councillor and founding member of the Student Volunteer Army, ran for the Ilam electorate in 2017 as an independent, coming second with 24% of the vote.
He worked extensively with survivors of the 2019 Christchurch mosque terror attacks and chose not to run in the 2020 election, which was won by Labour newcomer Sarah Pallett.
But Pallet was ranked 62nd on Labour’s list, and there was power in having a party leader based in Ilam, he said.
“People outside of Christchurch want to be here. I want to go to Wellington and tell the story of Ilam… most people there couldn’t find it on a map,” he said.
The fact there was an Auckland Student Volunteer Army currently doing mahi after Cyclone Gabrielle cut through the North Island was another example of the huge impact Christchurch had on the country.
He said next month TOP would launch Project Teal, a policy around climate change and the future. He believed it would “change the narrative of this election.”
Other policies on health and education, and an announcement of which other electorates TOP will run candidates, is still to be released.
TOP won 1.5% of the vote in 2020, and was polling around that mark last month despite not yet launching their leader’s campaign.