The New Citizen Party

The Herald reports:

A new political party linked to the businessman behind a failed Chinese bid for the Crafar dairy farms says it will contest the Botany byelection.

Jack Chen, who claims to be the force behind Natural Dairy NZ’s bid for the farms, met key leaders of the fledgling New Citizen Party in Beijing last week to discuss plans for its future.

The byelection, which follows the resignation of former Cabinet minister Pansy Wong from Parliament, has been set for March 5.

A party supporter, who did not want to be named, said that at the meeting, Mr Chen outlined a “two-step plan” to win parliamentary seats.

“First, there’s a plan to win Botany by winning the support of the migrants, who make up more than half of the voters there,” he said, speaking in Mandarin.

“Our party leaders will then be talking with Maori tribes to also get their party votes for us to get at least six candidates as MPs at this year’s election.”

It is possible that the New Citizen Party could get more votes in Botany than Labour. This might be one reason Labour is talking of not standing a candidate – they don’t want to risk coming third.

However I can’t see the NCP winning Botany. A party which holds its meeting in Beijing may not get that many votes from Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese, let alone Koreans, Indians and Japanese.

And as for the plan to get Iwi to endorse them and get party votes – yeah good luck with that.