Raf Manji on the future, reflecting and taking stock

TOP Leader Raf Manji at his campaign launch in February ahead of the election. Photo: Canta / Matteo Zhang.

The Ilam electorate was one of the most media covered political races of 2023.  With the weight of the party on his soldiers and a result that has now left TOP out of parliament for another three years, leader Raf Manji sat down with Canta to reflect on what was a hard-fought battle.

The night of the election when the results began to roll in, the margin between Manji and now Ilam MP Hamish Campbell grew and grew. National’s Dr Hamish Campbell finished with 15,107 votes, Manji coming in second with 8,526, not enough to take the seat and ‘coattail’ TOP into parliament.

The party earned 2.07% of the total vote, well below the 5% threshold required to get into parliament.

TOP was happy to be close to a 2.4% final party vote, similar to their 2017 result. While the preliminary count is in, with special votes still being counted, official election results will be released on the 3rd of November.

The result leaves tough questions on the future of the centrist minor party which was founded in 2016 by economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan, as without a spot in parliament they run the risk of becoming stagnant.

Manji told Canta it would take time for the party to take stock, "there's two decisions here, one is my own personal decision about what I do, and then there is a decision about the party.”

Manji had not yet decided about his future as leader.

He noted that with decisions like those, taking time to unwind from the battle was needed, "I did put a lot into the last 18 months to two years, having come out of retirement.”

After serving as the local councillor, in the 2017 general election Manji contested the Ilam seat as an independent but came second to National’s Gerry Brownlee.

He said it was likely he would make announcements on his position and the future for the party at TOP’s AGM on December 3rd.

Manji said that TOP could not get away from the issue of the party vote threshold, and he did not expect that issue to change anytime soon. This is despite the Independent Electoral Review recommending a lowering of the party threshold to 3.5% of the party vote.

He still believes that there is a demand for a focused Teal type movement in New Zealand, but how to successfully have it in New Zealand politics was a question his party needed to consider.

Raf Manji said a key part of his campaign was ‘flat chats’ with students at UC. Photo: Supplied / Canta

TOP also went into the campaign with an extremely limited financial base, said Manji, which forced the party to think hard about where it could dedicate its resources.

“We nearly ran out of money twice this year. People said, ‘so how much have you got for your campaign?’ It was zero,” Manji said.

"I use the metaphor of the political equivalent of climbing Mount Everest; we had very clear goals, base camps, camps to get to, and we knew that things would go wrong.”

“We just took the view that if they went wrong, just ignore it and just keep going.”

Towards the end of the campaign, TOP also called for National to act strategically and step aside in Ilam, to give Manji a better chance at taking the seat, which meant National would not have to work with Winston Peters.

Prime Minister elect Christopher Luxon ruled it out at the time saying that it would never happen, something which Manji believes was a mistake.

"I think that the tussle with National towards the end of it [the campaign] clearly didn't help because we were always open to doing a deal with them.”

“That has quite major implications, I don't think they [National] really thought that through carefully enough."

He said that the nature of the dual campaign, at a both national and electorate level, made selling TOP in Ilam a challenge.

Overall TOP knocked on 2000 doors, compared to National’s more then 15,000, which Manji said just came down to resources.

“In terms of use of time, we tried to cover a lot of different bases,” he said.

“Trying to keep a coherent national campaign together was pretty challenging, everything's about trade-offs.”

Manji said that the amount of work was phenomenal, but that while a lot of the campaign was beyond TOP’s control, he was still happy with what they had achieved.

“It's a long-term process, and it's about making a contribution, it's not about winning.”

“The process of politics is frustrating, and slow, if you see it as a process of engagement, rather than a process of winning or losing, then I think that's the way to approach it.”