It said eight of the 15 high chiefs in the House of Ariki, a purely advisory body to parliament established 42 years ago, announced they were dissolving the government elected in Sept. 2006 and taking over leadership of the island nation of just under 20,000 people.
The breakaway group of chiefs is headed by Bruce Mita, a Maori New Zealander and former director of a funeral home in Sydney, Australia, who had held secret meetings to help them get control of the Cook Islands’ natural resources.
TVNZ said Mita claimed he represented traders in New York and said he could make billions of dollars for the Cooks, a group of islands, which are self-governing in free association with New Zealand. Cook Islanders are citizens of New Zealand.
One chief, Makea Vakatini Joseph Ariki told TVNZ that they were “basically dissolving the leadership, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister and the ministers.”
But Terepai Maoate, deputy prime minister in the Cooks’ capital island of Rarotonga, said, “The government does not recognize what has taken place today.”
Paramount chief Pa Tepaeru Ariki said, “What the Ariki is doing now, is illegal, very illegal. It is a sad day for myself and other Ariki for this to happen.”
