Letter: Game of knives and nooses

Dear Editor, We finally hear and read that the High Court has found DPM Robert Tapaitau and his companions (Nga Puna and Diane Charlie-Puna) guilty of the crimes of fraud. I assure you that the Penrhyn MP is devastated as would be his family and supporters.

While that is so, in Tapaitau's case, blame should sit fairly at the doorstep of the Prime Minister Mark Brown and his predecessor Henry Puna. They courted this naive MP into the CIP Government offering him the world in his hands. They gave him whatever he wanted if he stuck with them, to keep Henry Puna and Brown as PM respectively. They literally gave him millions for little value, but to inflate Tapaitau’s ego. His supporters loved him as a no nonsense (a bully in the eyes of many) magician. He got them what they wanted. Click his fingers and he got it. The sorry fact is Tapaitau believed this fallacy. The two successive PMs enabled this mode of politics.
But it’s like giving him more rope to hang himself. It shows poor management of a charge straight from mixing concrete to the hallowed halls of power. Tapaitau believed he was invincible. He was so wrong. He found out the hard way, the law has a long arm and politics is not for concrete slab builders.
I say Tapaitau was a victim of bloody-minded politics, a consequence of loose, careless arrangements and of cowardly bosses who sold him out for their political security. I urge people to look inward carefully and you will see this game of knives and nooses at work.

The Hangman’s Noose

(Name and address supplied)