Candidates question ITK selection process

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

With only days remaining before the 12 members of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s annual general assembly gather in Puvirnituq to select the organization’s new president, candidates are coming forward to publicly question a process that seems to have already determined the incumbent, Jose Kusugak, to be the victor.

Pitseolak Pfeifer, one of the six candidates vying against Kusugak for the president’s seat, said that despite numerous phone calls to the four members of ITK’s board, the presidents of the four Regional Inuit Associations, he has not had a single call returned.

“I’ve tried for months to speak with all the directors and I’ve been unsuccessful in getting them to return my calls. In that sense, being a candidate for this presidency has been quite a challenge,” said Pfeifer, an Ottawa-based communications consultant and former ITK policy analyst.

“As far as having access to the board of directors, it has been quite challenging. Politics is not an easy game and this process has certainly demonstrated that.”

Peter Ittinuar, another candidate, said Kusugak is part of the problem. “I have nothing against Jose Kusugak, but the process does seem to be quite contrived, and certainly, Jose seems to be part and parcel of it. Whatever agreement they came to, it seems to have settled the outcome before any real democratic process has taken place,” Ittinuar, a communications officer with Ontario’s Native Affairs Secretariat, said in an interview from his home in Brantford, Ont.

“I’m sure it doesn’t make the organization very credible, it doesn’t make the incumbent very credible, and it doesn’t make the board of directors very credible.”

Pfeifer, Ittinuar, as well as John Amagoalik, a former president of the national Inuit organization who is currently working as a consultant for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., are calling on ITK to review the process of selecting a new president, or at least stop calling the process an “election.”

“The cancelled elections in June and the off-again, on-again candidacy of job seekers has deeply injured the credibility of ITK. The fact that only a handful of insiders and their chosen few will elect a president makes it appear that an old boys’ club rules ITK,” Amagoalik said in a letter to Nunatsiaq News.

The last Arctic-wide election was in May 1994, when Rosemarie Kuptana defeated Ruby Arngna’naaq, by only a few hundred votes. Kuptana stepped down in April 1996, leaving the organization with a deficit of more than $700,000. The board appointed Mary Sillett of Labrador to serve the rest of Kuptana’s term.

It was during that time that the board changed the election procedures of ITK (then called Inuit Tapirisat of Canada), to replace the universal election with the current process – election by the four board members, plus two delegates from each region.

Robbie Watt, one of the two candidates after the first call for nominations in May, suggested after the June 12 election was cancelled and the nomination period extended that the board revert to the Arctic-wide election system.

“Taking into consideration that they did not follow their set policies and procedures in regards to the nomination process, I felt that it would only be fair to reinstate the election process that once existed within ITK, which is the universal election,” Watt told Nunatsiaq News in June. He dropped out of the election this past fall.

But the remaining candidates don’t necessarily believe that a pan-Arctic election is the way to go, simply because of the cost involved.

“We would have to think of an election like the one the Assembly of First Nations does … where representatives from across the North are there and you have some fairness and parity among all the regions that ITK represents,” Ittinuar suggested.

Pfeifer recommended the new president conduct a post-mortem after the election. “There are lessons to be learned out of this process,” he said.

He added, however, that the current system has the potential to work. “In theory, the Inuit of Canada are represented through the land claim presidents of each region. They’re elected by the people and therefore they have the authority to speak on behalf of the people,” he said.

But it’s easy to see where the perception of an old boys’ club comes from. For instance, Kusugak was nominated for re-election by Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corp., one of the board members of ITK and one of the 12 voting members of the assembly.

Still, some candidates, like Ruby Arngna’naaq, who put in a strong showing during her last shot at the presidency in 1994, truly believe they’ve got a chance against Kusugak.

“Of course, I’m just as much an individual as he is. Just because he’s current president, doesn’t mean he’ll get a second seat. It doesn’t necessarily mean that, look at the last election.

In the last election, Kusugak beat Okalik Eegesiak, who was seeking a second term after ousting Mary Sillett from her seat in September 1997.