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RNZ News
01-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Fauono Ken Laban: first Pacific candidate for Lower Hutt mayoralty
Fuaono Ken Laban 30 06 2025 caption: Fuaono Ken Laban, community leader and mayoral candidate for Lower Hutt. Photo: Photo/RNZ/Supplied Community leader Fauono Ken Laban has officially announced his candidacy for the Lower Hutt mayoralty, making him the first Pacific candidate to enter the race to replace outgoing Mayor Campbell Barry. He promises to unite the city and refocus the council on fundamental priorities. As the son of Sāmoan migrants who built their life in Wainuiomata, Fauono is a well-known broadcaster, community leader, and former police officer. He launched his campaign on Tuesday with the slogan "Leadership That Unites, Priorities That Deliver." Photo: Fauono's decision to run is rooted in the principles of service, teamwork, and practical focus. He says his experience in policing, sports, and community service has taught him that real progress comes from teamwork and putting people first. "I've been a player, a captain, and a coach. I know what it takes to build a team that gets results," he says. "You need trust, shared goals, and the discipline to work together. Leading a city is no different. It's not about ego, it's about bringing everyone to the table to serve something bigger than ourselves." "I've spent my life bringing people together - on the field, in the community, and across the region. Real results come from teamwork. As Mayor, I'll unite people around clear priorities, listen to every voice, and lead a Council that truly works for our city." Ken Laban for Mayor caption: Fuaono Ken Laban launches his bid to be Lower Hutt's first Pacific mayor, promising leadership that unites and a council that puts people first. Photo: Supplied Fauono's vision for Lower Hutt includes partnering with mana whenua, supporting the retention of Māori wards, and prioritising strong local connections to improve safety. "Unity isn't a slogan, it's how I lead. It's about respecting people's voices, building trust, and getting the best out of everyone," he says. "When I was a community constable, I learned that real safety comes from strong relationships. It's not just about policing, it's about knowing your neighbours, having safe spaces for our young people, and ensuring support is there when families need it." Fauono advocates for a return to basics, ensuring that council spending delivers value for money, supporting local businesses and workers, and relieving pressure on households. He envisions a council that truly puts people at the heart of its work - one that listens, follows through, and achieves tangible results for the community. "Ratepayers deserve value for money. I'll make sure every dollar counts - focusing on the basics like water and roads, while creating opportunities for local businesses and workers. "We can't keep putting all the pressure on households. It's time for smarter, more disciplined leadership. "Because when we unite around shared values and clear priorities, there's nothing we can't achieve together." In a statement to Local Democracy Reporting, Fuaono discussed the importance of Pacific representation, his decision to stand, and how he plans to engage with youth. "My story is one of many Hutt Valley residents. The son of Sāmoan migrants who built their life here, raised to lead through acts of service. My decision to run for Mayor is grounded in that upbringing. I love my community so I have been called to serve them," he says. "I work with a number of young people, coaching multiple age grade rugby league teams here in the Hutt. They used to call me uncle but now with a few more grey hairs on my head, they call me Papa Ken instead. "I will be bringing them on this campaign with me, getting their input on my decisions, knowing they can reach people in ways I can't." Gabriel Tupou 30 06 2025 caption: Hutt City Councillor Gabriel Tupou says Ken Laban's mayoral bid is 'a game changer' for Pacific representation and could inspire more locals to vote. Photo: LDR / Mary Afemata Gabriel Tupou, Hutt City Councillor and the only Pasifika, told LDR that Fauono's candidacy could transform Pacific representation and increase voter turnout. "This is very significant for our Pacific community because we haven't had a mayor of Pacific descent. Ken represents the best of us," Tupou says. "Ken's a local legend - well-known and respected, not just in Wainuiomata or Lower Hutt but across the Wellington region. "His candidacy is a game changer, it will mobilise and motivate our people to vote. We've got a large Pacific community here, and I think that's what his campaign will do." Tupou says Fauono's background and life experience allow him to connect with ordinary residents, especially Pacific families facing similar challenges. "Ken comes from humble circumstances. He doesn't come from privilege. He understands the struggles our Pasifika families go through. He's a man of the people, so he knows what the issues are. With those insights, he brings strength, wisdom, leadership and humility." He described Fauono as "a local legend" and "a statesman" with broad appeal and a legacy of mentoring young people, saying, "Ken has a wide reach. He's down to earth and accessible to the community." Fauono joins sitting councillors Brady Dyer and Karen Morgan, as well as community advocate Prabha Ravi, who have also confirmed their intention to contest the mayoral elections. More candidates are expected to announce before nominations close. Nominations for Lower Hutt's local elections open on Friday and close at noon on 1 August. Voting papers will go out from September, with the election day nationwide on 11 October. LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
CBC
10-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
New and returning chiefs elected in N.W.T. Tłı̨chǫ communities
The four Tłı̨chǫ communities in the N.W.T. held their elections Monday night, voting in new and returning faces to lead their communities for a four-year term. In Behchokǫ̀, Bertha Rabesca-Zoe, a Tłı̨chǫ lawyer, defeated incumbent Clifford Daniels with 600 votes to Daniels'265. The community had a voter turnout of 70.5 per cent with 985 residents casting their ballots. In Whatı̀, Charlie Nitsiza, who formerly served as chief between 2005 and 2009, defeated incumbent Alfonz Nitsiza with 105 to 86 votes. Adeline Football was acclaimed as chief in Wekweètı̀ for a second term. Doreen Arrowmaker appears to have been re-elected as Gamètı̀'s chief, though CBC North has not seen official results.
Free Malaysia Today
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Tiong orders pullout from Sibu association over ‘interference' by politician
PDP president Tiong King Sing accused the political party involved of being arrogant and stubborn, and its leaders of being obsessed with power and position. (Bernama pic) PETALING JAYA : Progressive Democratic Party president Tiong King Sing has ordered party members to withdraw from a Chinese association in Sibu, Sarawak, over an unnamed politician's interference in the association's elections. Tiong claimed to have received numerous complaints about the political party leader's actions in the election of the Sibu Chinese Community Leaders Association's committee members. He did not name the party nor the leader, but gave a hint that it might be a party associated with PDP by questioning whether the party in question would be able to win future elections on its own 'without the support of allied parties'. Tiong said the politician was trying to manipulate the association's elections using his political influence. Tiong claimed he had evidence that the political party had issued instructions about the association's elections. Tiong, who is vice-chairman of the state's ruling coalition Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), warned against treating community leadership positions as political assets. 'This is my final warning. The political party in question has utterly failed to uphold the ideals of power-sharing and inclusiveness,' he said in a Facebook post. 'We do not need their so-called 'mercy' nor are we interested in being part of a body that has become another political stage for a party.' Tiong said the role of community leaders was to serve the public, and such leadership posts should never be the subject of a power struggle among political parties. He accused the other party's leaders of being obsessed with power and position. 'They bicker endlessly over trivial matters and seek to monopolise social resources and political capital,' he said. 'Their behaviour is nothing short of disgraceful.' PDP is a component of GPS, along with Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu, Parti Rakyat Sarawak, and the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP). PDP and SUPP leaders have clashed multiple times in recent years, particularly after the former accepted Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) leaders and members en bloc last year. PSB, led by Wong Soon Koh until its dissolution, is a splinter of SUPP.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
At 90, Tom Barnwell has left a lasting legacy on Hilton Head Island
Thomas C. Barnwell Jr. was born on an incoming tide on Hilton Head Island 90 years ago, and he's been riding a flood of change ever since. When Barnwell was inducted into the Hilton Head Island Hall of Fame in 2013, he was called 'an outspoken community leader, bringing an energetic voice — as well as affordable health care, public water systems and economic and educational opportunities — to the powerless.' Add affordable housing to the list. Between 1978 and 2000, he and his family have developed 100 units in five different projects on Hilton Head. And add environmental protection, from the days the Hilton Head Fishing Cooperative he and others founded joined the fight against a petrochemical plant coming to Bluffton. But as he and I talked ahead of his birthday on Monday, June 2, the dominant theme turned out to be family. Barnwell lives on Katie Miller Drive, named for his grandmother, his home in a rural setting amid the island's hubbub. We looked at a snapshot showing generations five through eight of his family on the island. It began when Caesar and Mariah Jones paddled over from Bluffton — seeking freedom during the Civil War, and presumably setting up home in the freedmen village of Mitchelville. Barnwell — a born entrepreneur who sold candy to his elementary school classmates and could always get the teacher off topic — has hair of gray and white now. He was wearing a starched oxford shirt, blue jeans and suspenders when he mentioned his ongoing second battle with prostate cancer. He and Susan Carter Barnwell will celebrate 52 years of marriage in September. Two of his children — Thomas 'Curtis' Barnwell III and Paulette Barnwell Ervin – live on the island. A third, Jason S. Barnwell, who has an engineering degree from MIT and a law degree from the University of Southern California — works for Microsoft in Seattle. He wants them to remember where they came from. Barnwell was born in the Squire Pope area of an island with no bridge, electricity, paved roads, hospital or telephones. As a child, he saw trees, sand and more trees. But his grandfather, Benjamin Walter White, 'used to say to us, 'Hold onto your land because Hilton Head Island one day will be the Garden of Eden place of the South.' That has remained one of Barnwell's mantras. 'I was just a little boy when I heard that,' he said. 'I said, 'This old man has got to be crazy.' I said that to myself. I wouldn't dare say that to him. I would have been told to go out there and get a switch and he would have whipped me.' That grandfather was a farmer who purchased a lot of land. 'He'd put us in a wagon when it was time to grind the cane and show us where his property lines used to be,' Barnwell said. Barnwell said he is saddened to see how much land has left Gullah hands 'for many reasons.' He said families should treat land as a business. His family leases the sandy soil on which a large, blue-roofed timeshare project rises on Skull Creek today. The family still owns the place where Paulette recalls as a child getting chased up a tree by a big bull named Jupiter. Barnwell's parents were bright lights guiding both him and the Gullah community. Tom Sr. was a farmer, ferryman and doorman — educated at the Penn School on St. Helena Island, as was Tom Jr. Island Packet co-founder and columnist Jonathan Daniels wrote that Tom Sr. was a 'shrewdly humorous, impeccably polite man' who served both the Gullah and the newcomers as a 'quiet and perceptive counselor.' But Barnwell said it was his mother, Hannah White Barnwell, who set him onto perhaps his most important life's work. She was educated at The Mather School in Beaufort, and at a nursing school for Black people in Columbia, and she was a force for both health care and child care on her isolated island. Barnwell recalled: 'She, as an adult, called me and said, 'There's this doctor in Bluffton named Dr. Donald Gatch. He is a very good friend of (public health nurse) Ann Pitts. You need to meet him. You need to spend some time with him. You need to understand what he has discovered as a problem in our area. And you need to spend some time working with him on that problem.' That was in 1968. The problem was children infested with intestinal parasites, and the associated poverty. Barnwell holds up the transcript of testimony about Lowcountry conditions he and others made before the U.S. Senate Select Subcommittee on Nutrition and Human Needs in February 1969. It became a national story. Gatch was known as 'The Hunger Doctor.' Among the outcroppings of that public reckoning was the creation of the Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services Inc., offering medical care to the indigent and organizing public water systems in rural areas. Barnwell was its director for a decade, and its administrative building in Okatie is named for him. Ninety years of rapid advances in the Lowcountry may have left one important thing behind. That is family. Commuting a couple of hours both to and from work on Hilton Head each day, 'disrupts the opportunity for families being able to blend and grow together as a unit,' Barnwell said. 'The jobs are important. They keep people financially afloat. But the family is more and more deteriorating.' Technology also plays a part, with every child holding a cellphone. 'Those things don't capture the kind of things we used to get from the older people, sitting next to the fireplace.' And that leaves a society not knowing — or appreciating — the dignity, sacrifice and work that brought today's opportunities. 'You'll find it in these books,' Barnwell said, tapping his stacks of documents. 'I hope maybe one of these days my grandchildren or great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren will look at these books and see that I, along with a lot of other people, have been helpful.' David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@ .
