Meka Whaitiri defecting to the Maori Party five months out from election shows the true state the Labour Party is in. Worse still the Labour leadership had no idea why and still don’t.

The worst aspect of the defection is the trampling of our democratic process and of the true voice of the people who voted for a person to represent them in the seat and for the Party they stood for.

If Meka was voted in by kiwis standing for Labour in a constituency seat but is now sitting in parliament with the Maori Party - who exactly is she purporting to represent?

The calculated and deliberate manner with which Meka has resigned within six months of the election is to avoid a mandate to remain in parliament in the first place - she should be contesting a bi-election as I did thirty years ago. It is a deliberate disgraceful deception played on the voters of New Zealand.

Standing in a bi-election to regain the local voters' consent for one to be in parliament involves personal sacrifice and cost - but that’s what true democracy requires if an MP wants to argue that they have integrity.

The fact that the Labour Party is falling apart at the seams with individual’s egos and agendas taking priority over the New Zealand people is a blight on our already suffering democracy.