Letters for Saturday October 30, 2021

Dear Editor,

The ‘self-righteous’ Te Tuhi Kelly and ‘pure as snow’ Florence Syme Buchanan speak as if they are perfect!

They believe that only university graduates and full-time saints can stand for politics.

Are these two for real? 

They believe that ordinary Cook Islanders are too dumb to be allowed to vote because they might vote in their mates and ‘same old’ politicians, instead of people like them who seem to forget their past.

People have long memories and remember your past errors!

Please get real. Stop the boring mud-slinging. Tell us how you plan to make a difference.

Concerned Citizen

(Name and address supplied)

Florence Syme Buchanan’s reply:

These are not the writings of a ‘Concerned Citizen’ – these are the misguided, out of beat bleatings of someone who completely misses the point, because he/she chooses to. I’m not going to descend into a battle of words with a phantom, gutless letter writer.

I walk the talk. Call me and I will tell you the projects that our organisation Mana Tiaki Ngatangiia has in place for Ngatangiia and the wider community.

This week I gave three laptops to Te Korero Orau to help senior students become IT savvy. What have you done this week for our community to make a difference?

And no one is perfect. Certainly not me. And not you either.

But some of us do not fear anyone. Some of us have the courage to speak the truth, however painful, and demand transparency and accountability from the people we pay to serve us.

Tourist dollars

Shame the Cooks didn’t take those tourist dollars and invest in state of the art health facilities and top notch services to attract wealthy and retired visitors who would happily pay for longer stays to get away from cold winter months. Or just visitors who would happily pay for a better health/(dentistry too) service whilst on holiday.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Cookies had free access to those said health facilities/resources and Covid wasn’t something to fear as the Cooks would already be a wealthier healthier nation. Because of course, with good health comes the best education. But perhaps we put all our eggs are in one basket. I don’t actually know anything, I didn’t read the article, I just wanted to rant.

Leilani D Brown

(Facebook)