Of political consultants, mate, and Haka

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand – I have often said that politics is the same wherever you are. In an election year, strategists talk about messaging, framing the debate, branding, positioning, and targeting. These professional strategists, known as political consultants, give sharper focus on these key strategies. Political consultants are rarely center stage. They are mostly backroom operators trying to understand events and polls to guide a client to effectively communicate the message, as well as to help the client’s organization in implementing what needs to be done in response to a challenge or to altogether convert that challenge into an opportunity.

Today in Auckland, a big deal is being made of election campaign consultants Crosby Textor, an Australian firm that is regularly hired for conservative campaigns in Australia and Britain, where “its strategic subtlety has been impressive.” Of course there were other political consultants who did the astonishing makeover of incumbent Prime Minister Helen Clarke in 1996: the hairdo, the lipstick, and the designer clothes of that of “the goofy Don Brash in 2005 concocted by marketers trying to make a populist out of a serious man of ideas.”

Interestingly here in Auckland, Clarke’s Labour Party is behind by as much as 15 percent in the recent polls against National’s John Key. But in their preparations for the general elections on 15 November 2008, the National is well aware of the events in 2005 with a late Labour comeback in the vote count due to GOTV (Get Out The Votes) operations. On Sunday, Key’s blurry plans will be unravelled during a Party Conference in Wellington. Labour has questioned the details of Key’s plan, which, as reports describe it, remains “almost the same with a little contrast.” But really now, should leaders pander to the right or the left? Or should they stay in the middle where majority of the voters are? Well, mate, you reckon?

And really, the disparity in the English language is quite pervasive here from the American English we are so used to.

This leads me to the Maori people and the art of Haka, a generic term for Maori dance. In Haka, the whole body should speak. If you are familiar with the sport of rugby and the All-Black rugby team of New Zealand, you would have seen a “taunt” made by all the members of the team. The taunt we call is their Haka. Try looking for it in YouTube and you will find it fascinating.

"The Haka is a composition played by many instruments. Hands, feet, legs, body, voice, tongue, and eyes all play their part in blending together to convey in their fullness the challenge, welcome, exultation, defiance or contempt of the words. It is disciplined, yet emotional. More than any other aspect of Maori culture, this complex dance is an expression of the passion, vigour and identity of the race. It is at its best, truly, a message of the soul expressed by words and posture."

Well, from down under I say Kia Ora!

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