No Outright Victor in New Zealand
Voters failed to pick a winner outright in New Zealand’s parliamentary elections Saturday, putting a nationalist party that took just 13% of the vote in the kingmaker’s seat.
With 97% of the vote counted, the ruling National Party received 34% to the opposition Labor Party’s 28%.
Conservative Prime Minister Jim Bolger vowed to woo an old rival in the New Zealand First Party, but Labor also is trying to persuade its charismatic Maori leader, Winston Peters, to join it in a center-left partnership to control the new 120-member Parliament.
Peters is a populist wild card who has promised a return to traditional values, better health care and “a New Zealand controlled by New Zealanders.”
Relishing his new role as power broker, Peters refused to say which way he would jump.
Peters said he will talk with both Bolger and Labor leader Helen Clark but that “it will probably take weeks to negotiate a coalition.”
If Clark succeeds, she will become New Zealand’s first female prime minister. Bolger is trying to save his 6-year-old National Party government.
The elections were the first using a new format designed to produce coalition governments.
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